Pelotons, Priuses and Permanent Magnets

Welcome to Science at Work, a new podcast from Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, South Carolina. I’m your host, Mike Ettlemyer. Science at Work is a production of the Savannah River National Laboratory, SRNL, Office of Communications. You might not know very much about what a national lab is or what it does. We hope to change that by interviewing the scientists, engineers and other professionals who are at the heart of who we are, what we do and why it matters.

This year is a special one for us. It’s been 20 years since the U.S. Department of Energy designated SRNL as a national lab. But the very beginnings of SRNL stretch back to the early 1950s and the Cold War.

Today, we’ll speak to Alex Bretana, the SRNL Laboratory Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Advanced Energy and Materials Group. Alex studies magnets, which are very interesting and relevant to a lot of everyday things we all own. In fact, he won the People’s Choice Award in a competition where he presented his research about magnets to non-scientists. You might ask, why is that important?

Well, I’ll tell you. It means he can communicate the research in a way that it is understandable to non-Ph.Ds like me. But before we get to that, let’s turn back the clock a bit so we can get to know Alex.

Alex, first, thanks for joining us today. It’s great to have you here.

Alex Bretana: Thank you for having me.

Mike: Yeah. Where did you attend college and what did you study?

Alex: So, I grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, and I studied at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. And what did I study is, a loaded question. I studied a little bit of everything. So, I started pre-med biology, then transferred to chemistry and then finally found my love in physics. And that is where I stayed.

Mike: So, you tried many different sciences.

Alex: Yeah, I sort of tiptoed around all of the subjects and really found what fit with me and what worked with me, and then stuck with it.

Mike: That’s great. I’ve heard St. Louis is a beautiful part of the country, too. I’ve never, never been out there.

Alex: It can be. The weather’s a little interesting. Yeah. As Missouri or people from Missouri like to say, it’s, you get the weather from essentially all four corners of the U.S. So, one week you can have 90 degree temperatures. The next night it’ll be 32 and snowing and then, yeah, rinse and repeat. The rest of the week it’s never boring.

Mike: So, you’re in St. Louis studying, but what brought you to SRNL?

Alex: So, mostly the postdoctoral program. SRNL has a very unique capability in what they can accomplish, and my goal was to attend a national lab and hopefully advance my own career. And so, SRNL was the lab that I chose.

Mike: Oh, that’s great. That’s great. What is the Advanced Energy and Materials Group and why is it important to SRNL? We were talking a little bit about this before the podcast, full confession. And, you know, the Advanced Energy and Materials Group, it just rolls off the tongue. But Alex will let us know what that’s about.

Alex: It is a mouthful. It’s such a mouthful. We had to have a little prepared answer, so I’d like to read the answer and then, briefly explain it. So, our group focuses on enabling the nation’s energy transition by advancing safe and viable low carbon materials, including decarbonized manufacturing processes for many different sectors and applications, as well as the study and development of unique magnetic materials.

And so, yes, all that is a mouthful, but essentially what our group does, in short, is we synthesize or make new materials, then we characterize them or determine their physical properties. And in many cases, we often optimize these materials. So, whether that be from a performance perspective, a manufacturing perspective, a cost perspective, that is the work we do. So, in a nutshell, we study new and exotic next generation materials for unique applications.

Mike: That sounds really cool and pretty important work as well.

You’re listening to Science at Work, a new podcast from Savannah River National Laboratory. We’re speaking with Alex Bretana, a physicist and postdoctoral fellow at SRNL.

Now, Alex, I understand from your award-winning presentation that we all come into contact with and benefit from magnetic materials throughout our day. Could you please, just tell us a bit about your work with magnets and how your research might impact our listeners?

Alex: Absolutely. So, I study the synthesis and the characterization of a critical material. Free permanent magnets. And so that is a mouthful in and of itself. But first and foremost, we have to understand what a permanent magnet is. So many people are familiar with, you know, protons, electrons and neutrons all in an atom. So, electrons for magnetism are really the star of the show.

Electrons orbit around the nucleus. Electrons themselves can behave as if they are a tiny little magnet. So, if you imagine an electron just like a compass needle, which always points in the direction of Earth’s magnetic field, an electron can point in the direction of a magnetic field. Given enough electrons in a material, all of the electrons can point in the same direction.

And that is what makes, a permanent magnet. So, my work is all about synthesizing and characterizing new, exotic, permanent magnets without critical materials.

Mike: And can you give an example of, you know, equipment or products or things that people may not think of normally as containing magnets?

Alex: Oh, absolutely. So, if this morning you used, let’s say you threw on a pair of headphones and went for a jog, or maybe instead of going for a jog, you hopped on your Peloton bike. If you used a computer this morning, or maybe just hopped in the car on your way to work.

So, cars, headphones, Peloton bikes, all of these devices, use and harness the power of permanent magnets.

Mike: Well, that sounds interesting, because, I mean, I knew a little bit about magnets and kind of where they’re located and what they’re in, but, not that so many of the things that I’ve already used or come into contact with today, such as headphones, would contain them like that — that’s good stuff.

Where is your research going in the future? What’s the future of magnets? And I guess what I mean by that is, can you explain that at this point, or as with a lot of research, will it depend on what the data show you?

Alex: So, the future of magnets is really, I would say one word — smaller. So, our goal is to reduce the critical element content in these magnets, and ultimately optimize their performance to the best of our abilities.

And so, in a nutshell, the goal of or where the science is going in the future, specifically permanent magnets, I would say, is to smaller and smaller permanent magnets in order to make smaller and smaller devices, to better optimize electric vehicles to make more powerful wind turbines. So, in a nutshell, I would say smaller and smaller magnets are probably the future.

Mike: Okay. Okay, that makes sense because, it seems like things are getting smaller and smaller all the time.

Alex: Exactly.

Mike: And so, we need those smaller magnets. So, I would say we’ve enjoyed, I’ve enjoyed getting to know you, the SRNL scientist. But what do you like to do for fun away from work?

Alex: I have quite a few hobbies. I enjoy spending time with my wife of seven years as well. As I would say, my primary hobby is keeping coral reef aquariums.

Mike: Oh. Very cool. I’ve always had an interest in marine biology. I haven’t done anything with that, but that’s cool.

Alex: You should. Definitely. It’s a wonderful field.

Mike: Great, great. Other than that, you mentioned many hobbies.

Alex: No, absolutely. I dabble in furniture making. So, I have designed and built two couches. I’m working on two daybeds currently. And then a side hobby. I also like to grow various species of orchids.

Mike: Very cool. Wow. And they’re all very, disconnected.

Alex: Yes.

Mike: So that’s good. You know, you keep things interesting.

Alex: Exactly. Well versed.

Mike: Yes. Alex, we appreciate your time today. Thanks for sharing your expertise. And thanks to all of you for listening. Science at Work is a production of the Savannah River National Laboratory.

Alex: Thank you for having me.