In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Bharat Gwalani from North Carolina State University and Mert Efe from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory about their single-step, energy-efficient method for making a samarium cobalt magnet. Using a process they call “friction stir consolidation,” the researchers apply heat and pressure simultaneously to fuse the two powders together. Their method results in low porosity to make a magnetically stronger, higher quality material than that made by using the conventional method. This work was published in a recent issue of Nature Communications.