There's a lot of canceled items in the patent, I wonder if that's because it was too vague to be part of the patent? I agree with your interpretation of the man

There's a lot of canceled items in the patent, I wonder if that's because it was too vague to be part of the patent? I agree with your interpretation of the manufacturing process. They expose the sheet of <001> Fe to either nitrogen gas (N2) or NH3. NH3 does break apart with high temperature but ideally you want to work with N2 instead for safety reasons. It's more efficient to break the N2 bond using a cracking source, they use a plasma arc to break the bond of N2. The usual problem is always going to be compositional control, you know, coming up with a method that preserves the rather excessive stoichiometry of Fe16N2. There's a bunch of other phases that can be achieved with simpler stoichiometries, so the long term stability of this magnetic phase is of concern to me. What are the ideal operating conditions of this magnet before interdiffusion occurs and we lose the right stoichiometry? Maybe there's a small window that could render this material inapplicable to many mechanical or thermal conditions. Oxidation of the Fe sheet before nitridization is another concerns. Fe oxidizes very easily and would become a barrier for the nitrogen. The other concern is that they characterize the magnet's performance only on the product of saturation magnetization and coercivity, and mention using ion bombardment to enhance the coercivity. This can be interpreted to mean that the Fe16N2 has a poor coercivity which means that it's a magnet that is very easy to switch with weak magnetic fields or thermal energy. Not what you want for permanent magnet applications. So I still have a lot of questions and concerns although I do think it's worth pursuing this material because it makes a lot of financial sense as Fe and N are super common and easier to process.