Samarium-Cobalt Magnet

Samarium Cobalt (SmCo5) is used in making a new permanent magnet material and has the highest resistance to demagnetization of any known material. Samarium itself is a rare earth metal, with a bright silver luster. Cobalt is a tough lustrous silver-white magnetic metallic element that is related to and occurs with iron and nickel and is used especially in alloys. Other uses of Samarium include: Carbon-arc lighting for the motion picture industry (together with other rare earth metals), doping CaF2 crystals for use in optical lasers, as a neutron absorber in nuclear reactors. It is also used for headphones, and now guitar pickups. (Recall that guitar pickups are magnetic coils.) Samarium Cobalt Magnets can achieve very strong fields for their size (second to neodymium), which has far reaching implications for transducer design.