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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday August 04 2020, @02:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the fool-me-once,-shame-on-you dept.

'Fool's gold' may be valuable after all: For the first time, researchers electrically transform material from non-magnetic to magnetic:

In a breakthrough new study, scientists and engineers at the University of Minnesota have electrically transformed the abundant and low-cost non-magnetic material iron sulfide, also known as "fool's gold" or pyrite, into a magnetic material.

This is the first time scientists have ever electrically transformed an entirely non-magnetic material into a magnetic one, and it could be the first step in creating valuable new magnetic materials for more energy-efficient computer memory devices.

The research is published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"Most people knowledgeable in magnetism would probably say it was impossible to electrically transform a non-magnetic material into a magnetic one. When we looked a little deeper, however, we saw a potential route, and made it happen," said Chris Leighton, the lead researcher on the study and a University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.

[...] "We were pretty surprised it worked," Leighton said. "By applying the voltage, we essentially pour electrons into the material. It turns out that if you get high enough concentrations of electrons, the material wants to spontaneously become ferromagnetic, which we were able to understand with theory. This has lots of potential. Having done it with iron sulfide, we guess we can do it with other materials as well."

Leighton said they would never have imagined trying this approach if it wasn't for his team's research studying iron sulfide for solar cells and the work on magnetoionics.

"It was the perfect convergence of two areas of research," he said.

Leighton said the next step is to continue research to replicate the process at higher temperatures, which the team's preliminary data suggest should certainly be possible. They also hope to try the process with other materials and to demonstrate potential for real devices.

Journal Reference:
Jeff Walter, Bryan Voigt, Ezra Day-Roberts, et al. Voltage-induced ferromagnetism in a diamagnet [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb7721)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:07PM (18 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:07PM (#1031294)

    "Most people knowledgeable in magnetism would probably say it was impossible to electrically transform a non-magnetic material into a magnetic one."

    Uhm ... I thought it's been widely known that you can magnetize a piece of metal with a battery and some wire or with one of those screw driver magnetizers you can sometimes get for a buck at the dollar store.

    So... this is saying that ... with more power you can magnetize things that are generally more difficult to magnetize?

    It's probably not done very often because

    A: It costs more. There are cheaper alternatives
    B: Since iron sulfide doesn't like to be magnetized the magnets it makes would be weak and may not last very long. Hence there are better alternatives that are used instead.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by dioxide on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:55PM (5 children)

    by dioxide (7248) on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:55PM (#1031321)

    If you only need the power to turn the magnet on or off, but not to hold the state, it's a big deal.
    Electromagnets require constant power.

    dioxide

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by dioxide on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:05PM (1 child)

      by dioxide (7248) on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:05PM (#1031324)

      Reading back, it kind of sounds like they're just using this as an electromagnetic core? Lame.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @12:45AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @12:45AM (#1031505)

        No, they aren't but it is similar. Electromagnets use ferro/ferrimagnetic cores to control and boost the magnetic field in the coils. In this experiment, the application of voltage to the material directly, i.e. as a component in a circuit, causes it to change into a ferromagnitic state from its diamagnet state, without the use of a coil.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:09PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:09PM (#1031328)

      That's not what I'm referring to. You can make a metal object remain magnetic. This has been well known already.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:00PM (#1031351)

        Well, reading the actual article (and not just the excerpt) it looks like dioxide does have the right idea

      • (Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday August 05 2020, @01:30AM

        by ChrisMaple (6964) on Wednesday August 05 2020, @01:30AM (#1031520)

        There is a difference between magnetic as a material property and magnetized. Iron is a magnetic material which can be magnetized, but is not necessarily magnetized. Wood is not a magnetic material; it cannot be magnetized.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:08PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:08PM (#1031355)

    > you can magnetize a piece of metal with a battery and some wire

    Wooosh. Of course this works with any metal (like iron) that is known to be magnetic. The new thing here (and I think it's really clever) is taking a material that was traditionally known to be non-magnetic (not magnetizable) and turning it into something that can be magnetized.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:16PM (9 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:16PM (#1031359)

      Yeah, I got that now. It wasn't clear from the excerpt.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:52PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:52PM (#1031378)

        > Yeah, I got that now.

        You are welcome,
        -- a Boomer

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @08:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @08:02PM (#1031381)

          Sorry, I got that part from before. The part I didn't get was the part that dioxide explained until I read the article.

          Still doesn't change the fact that this is ... not impressive.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:56PM (6 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:56PM (#1031380)

        This still doesn't really change the fact that they didn't really do anything impressive.

        "if you get high enough concentrations of electrons, the material wants to spontaneously become ferromagnetic,"

        The part I didn't understand was that it didn't turn it into a permanent magnet. They didn't really do anything impressive. They just showed that with some things that are hard to magnetize with 'more power' you can still magnetize them.

        • (Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday August 05 2020, @01:35AM (5 children)

          by ChrisMaple (6964) on Wednesday August 05 2020, @01:35AM (#1031523)

          It's more than that. Dig down into the citations, and you'll find that this only works up to 25 Kelvin.

          More importantly, this is an advance in theoretical physics, something new and unexpected. Better yet, they're actually able to make the experimental results match some model.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @05:08AM (4 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @05:08AM (#1031572)

            "something new and unexpected."

            They found out that Iron Sulfide has a magnetic acceptability, something I could have found out from Wikipedia.

            Magnetic susceptibility (χ) +1074·10−6 cm3/mol
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron(II)_sulfide [wikipedia.org]

            "they're actually able to make the experimental results match some model."

            So it wasn't unexpected then. It was just another experiment with expected results. Those results were expected based on models from prior experiments. Big deal.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @05:10AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @05:10AM (#1031573)

              magnetic susceptibility *

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @06:09AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @06:09AM (#1031582)

              FeS != FeS2

              Iron(II) sulfide != Iron(II) Disulfide

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @12:30PM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @12:30PM (#1031670)

                Fair enough. So I'm reading about FeS2 and it says it's paramagnetic.

                Pyrite
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite [wikipedia.org]

                So reading about paramagnetism it says

                "Paramagnetism is a form of magnetism whereby some materials are weakly attracted by an externally applied magnetic field, and form internal, induced magnetic fields in the direction of the applied magnetic field.

                ...paramagnets do not retain any magnetization in the absence of an externally applied magnetic field

                When a magnetic field is applied, the dipoles will tend to align with the applied field, resulting in a net magnetic moment in the direction of the applied field."

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramagnetism [wikipedia.org]

                So ... it looks like the results of this experiment are ... what Wikipedia already says they will be?

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @08:52PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @08:52PM (#1031945)

                  No. Pyrite is paramagnetic because of the internal structure and impurities and the pure stuff should be weakly paramagnetic if not diamagnetic. Ferromagnetism is not the same as paramagnetism. When you apply electricity to this material, it generates its own ferromagnetic field temporarily. This is not the same as reacting to an externally applied magnetic field as a paramagnetic or ferrimagnetic material.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @12:21AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @12:21AM (#1031497)

    "Fucking Magnets, How do they work?" Insane Clown Posse, (2009)