Received his Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. For the past four decades, he has worked in research and development of permanent magnets and related magnetic materials in China, Europe, and USA. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor with The University of Texas at Arlington, and an elected fellow of the American Physical Society and the IEEE. His current research has been focused on hard magnetic nanoparticles, thin films, and bulk nanocomposites, as reported in his more than 340 peer-reviewed journal articles, review articles, and books. He serves as the Editor of the serial Handbook of Magnetic Materials (Elsevier). He has supervised more than 60 graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. He is the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award at the 25th International Workshop on Rare-Earth and Future Permanent Magnets and Their Applications in 2018, and the Hill Prize in Physical Sciences by the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology in 2025. He has been invited to give more than two hundred eighty invited talks world-wide, including the IEEE Magnetics Distinguished Lectures, the Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium, and the Tohoku Forum for Creativity.

 

 

Magnetic materials are essential in human civilization, as demonstrated by the application of compasses in ancient times. Since the second Industrial Revolution in early 20th century, a leap in magnet performance and magnet production has been achieved, particularly after the discovery of rare-earth-based permanent magnets in the 1960s. High-strength permanent magnets have played an indispensable role in today’s technologies, especially in the soaring applications in energy conversion and transportation devices including motors and generators. However, there have been increasing concerns over the supply chain of rare-earth magnets which is a current geopolitical issue that may become an international conflict. From the viewpoint of technology, more permanent magnets must be developed to meet the rapidly growing demands for electrification in the era of artificial intelligence. Right now, only two major types of magnets, ferrites and neodymium magnets, are available in the markets. The key technical problem relevant to permanent magnet development is how to enhance coercivity for heavy-duty applications. Although long efforts have been made to understand coercivity mechanisms in the past century, many challenges remain in the fundamental and processing aspects in the search for stronger permanent magnets. In the past two decades, our UTA group has pioneered in the area of nanoscale magnets and has made significant discoveries and progress in synthesis and characterization of novel nanostructured hard magnetic materials. We have revealed that coercivity can be substantially enhanced in the low-dimensional structures that lead to a solution to the outstanding Brown’s Coercivity Paradox. It is also demonstrated that nanostructured high anisotropic magnets, including exchange-coupled nanocomposite magnets and nanowire-based magnets, have tremendous technical and economic advantages as the next generations of permanent magnets for future advanced applications.