With the arrival of the information age, the trend of computers entering homes has formed.
According to a market research conducted in the United States, the global sales of PCs for home use will reach 40 million in 2018 and 80 million in 2019. The development of computers has driven the development of related components. Permanent magnets are widely used in computers such as hard drives, floppy drives, and optical drive heads. Approximately 4,000 tons of neodymium iron boron magnets are used for computer drive programs each year, accounting for 50% of neodymium iron boron sales.
The neodym magnet is used for multiple purposes in computers:
Usually, a hard drive (drive and linear magnetic head motor) contains multiple neodymium cube magnets and multiple electromagnetic coils.
Data is stored magnetically on the hard drive. The disk surface is coated with a magnetic material composed of billions or even trillions of tiny magnets. Computer circuit components can store data based on the presence or absence of current, which can be represented by 0 or 1. The north and south poles of the tiny new magnets on the surface of the hard drive can represent 0 and 1, making them very suitable for computer data storage.
The electromagnetic head is used to store data in these units, because the electromagnet can reverse its polarity by reversing the direction of the current passing through it—allowing it to rearrange the polling of tiny hard drive magnets. The same head can also read data stored on the hard drive.
If they are not piezoelectric, they usually have an iron-core permanent magnet and an electromagnetic coil. There are also some headphones, voice coil motors, and earplugs.
The motor is a necessary component of the electric fan, and all motors contain neodym magnets as they use magnetism and electricity to cause motion. In computers, fans are mainly used for cooling purposes and are installed on all major heat-generating computer components, including processors, power supplies, and high-end graphics cards.
In some computers, there may be additional fans in the casing to provide enhanced cooling and ensure smooth performance. Without these fans, the excessive heat generated can cause a significant decrease in computer performance or even device failure.
CRT (cathode-ray tube) is widely used in most computer monitors used today as its display technology. These are glass vacuum tubes, one end of which is an electron gun and the other end is a fluorescent screen, which emits light when the electron beam emitted by the electron gun hits it. The electron beam is accelerated and deflected by an electromagnetic field (powered by a neodym magnet) before it impacts the screen, effectively forming an image. The monitor receives input display signals that constantly change, thereby achieving animated video displays.
The moving parts of the computer (such as the lens and the eject mechanism of the optical drive) require motors to achieve their motion, thus requiring the use of neodymium magnets, as all motors use magnets to operate.
