Laura Lewis

How to build strong magnets without rare-earth metals

(An easy way to think of this, says Laura Lewis, an engineer at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, is as a measure of the effort needed to prise a magnet off a steel filing cabinet).

Business Insider

Trump wants Ukraine’s rare earth elements. Experts say he’s overlooking a major issue.

Rare earth elements have been a key focus of the proposed deal, with Trump repeatedly referencing them. Yet “I cannot find credible evidence of rare earth deposits in Ukraine. At all,” Laura Lewis, a professor in chemical, mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University’s College of Engineering, told Business Insider.

For clean energy and high-tech, building stronger magnets

The periodic table seems to epitomize an older, well-established version of science that is more high school chemistry than high-tech wind turbines or fuel-efficient car engines. But whole swaths of the periodic table that most people have never heard of are crucial for technology and clean energy generation. And in recent years, these materials, with […]

Rare-earth mineral substitutes could defeat Chinese stranglehold

“Nothing happens. Nothing happens. And then everything happens,” says Laura Lewis, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. “Our results are highly preliminary but we have found signatures of layering in the materials we have made.” This is significant, she says, because the layering of iron and nickel suggests that the nanomaterial […]