Engineers just cut energy loss in magnets by 98%, which could make wireless chargers and the power grid nearly perfect.
April 3, 2026
Original Paper
Suppression of Skin-Effect-Induced Structural Magnetic Friction for Ultralow-Loss MHz Soft Magnetic Composites
SSRN · 6507579
The Takeaway
By identifying a hidden type of 'magnetic friction' caused by high-frequency signals, researchers redesigned a material to virtually eliminate waste heat. This massive leap in efficiency could make everything from electric cars to phone chargers significantly smaller and cooler.
From the abstract
The relentless pursuit of miniaturization and high-power density in energy-conversion systems renders the upscaling of soft magnetic materials into the MHz frequency regime an imperative. However, this transition is currently bottlenecked by catastrophic core losses. This limitation arises from two coupled challenges: eddy-current loss scales quadratically with frequency, yet more critically, the physical origin of excess loss remains elusive. Here, we reveal that skin-effect-induced structural