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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday June 11 2017, @02:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the next-is-a-1D-magnet dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The number of 2D materials has exploded since the discovery of graphene in 2004. However, this menagerie of single-atom-thick semiconductors, insulators and superconductors has been missing a member — magnets. In fact, physicists weren't even sure that 2D magnets were possible, until now.

Researchers report the first truly 2D magnet, made of a compound called chromium triiodide, in a paper published on 7 June in Nature. The discovery could eventually lead to new data-storage devices and designs for quantum computers. For now, the 2D magnets will enable physicists to perform previously impossible experiments and test fundamental theories of magnetism.

Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, a condensed-matter physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and Xiaodong Xu, an optoelectronics researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, were searching for a 2D magnet separately before meeting in 2016. They decided to combine forces to investigate. "It's a matter of principle — there is a big thing missing," says Jarillo-Herrero.

Xu and Jarillo-Herrero worked with chromium triiodide because it's a crystal comprising stacked sheets that can be separated using the 'Scotch tape method': a way of making 2D materials by using adhesive tape to peel off ever thinner layers. The scientists were also attracted to the compound because of its magnetic properties.

Like refrigerator magnets, chromium triiodide is a ferromagnet, a material that generates a permanent magnetic field owing to the aligned spins of its electrons. Chromium triiodide is also anisotropic, meaning that its electrons have a preferred spin direction — in this case, perpendicular to the plane of the crystal. These fundamental properties made Xu and Jarillo-Herrero suspect that chromium triiodide would retain its magnetic characteristics when stripped down to a single layer of atoms. That's something other 2D materials can't do.

Jarillo-Herrero's group grew chromium triiodide crystals and flaked off single- and multi-layer sheets, while Xu's lab studied the samples using a sensitive magnetometer.

The team found that not only was a single atomic layer of chromium triiodide magnetic, but also that this property emerged at what is considered a relatively warm temperature: about –228 °C. They also discovered that a two-layered sheet of this material isn't magnetic, but when a third is added the substance becomes a ferromagnet again. The material remains magnetic if a fourth layer is added, but gains other properties the researchers say they're still investigating.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:09AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:09AM (#523674)

    One atom thick is not 2D.

    Buzzword matching is not AI.

    Fuck you, bitch ass deceitful marketing bitch, fuck you.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:15AM (#523676)

    Matter and energy ain't real. It's all them quirks and virty particles.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @03:24AM (#523680)

    Buzzword Betty should get together with Snotnose likes it up the butt [soylentnews.org].

  • (Score: 2) by KGIII on Sunday June 11 2017, @05:33AM

    by KGIII (5261) on Sunday June 11 2017, @05:33AM (#523700) Journal

    Thank you. Seriously.

    Even a drawing, with pencil, of something like a house, is not 2D. It represents a 2D project, but even the width of the pencil makes it a third dimension - albeit a pretty small width.

    If I remember blueprint technology, the blueprint of their drawing would be 2D, inasmuch as something can physically be so - it may have raised or lowered the projection, at the atomic level. I don't know but I don't recall it as having done so.

    In other words, as painful as it may be to express, the drawing would be 3D - 'cause the pencil has depth. (We're assuming it was done by pencil.) It's not much, but it's enough for pedantic people to be pedantic - and correct, I'm pretty sure. Even if the drawing is in 3D, it doesn't mean it represents three dimensions. But, back in reality, there's three dimensions in the drawing - even if one of them is bordering on stupid to count.

    Now, I'm kinda curious if a blueprint has slight elevations for the exposed portions making it actually 3D, even if it doesn't represent a 3D object directly. To make it more confusing - is orthographic projection 3D, if the actual drawing is 3D, because of the medium? Buggered if I know and I'll take any authoritative sounding answer. I am not scared. ;-)

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @09:44AM (#523742)

    "2D material" refers to the property that in the math to discuss said material you only need to take into account 2 dimensions, literally. It's not an approximation, the equations that accurately describe the system are 2D.
    Your argument is valid for pool for instance, where balls rotate in 3D even though they move in 2D (except for trick shots where they even move in 3D; i don't know enough about pool to know when these trick shots are legal).