Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
When scientists and engineers discover new ways to optimize existing materials, it paves the way for innovations that make everything from our phones and computers to our medical equipment smaller, faster, and more efficient.
According to research published today by Nature Journal NPG Asia Materials, a group of researchers -- led by Edwin Fohtung, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute -- have found a new way to optimize nickel by unlocking properties that could enable numerous applications, from biosensors to quantum computing.
They demonstrated that when nickel is made into extremely small, single-crystal nanowires and subjected to mechanical energy, a huge magnetic field is produced, a phenomenon known as giant magnetostriction.
Inversely, if a magnetic field is applied to the material, then the atoms within will change shape. This displacement could be exploited to harvest energy. That characteristic, Fohtung said, is useful for data storage and data harvesting, even biosensors. Though nickel is a common material, its promise in these areas wasn't previously known.
"Imagine building a system with large areas of nanowires. You could put it in an external magnetic field and it would harvest a very huge amount of mechanical energy, but it would be extremely small," Fohtung said.
The researchers uncovered this unique property through a technique called lensless microscopy, in which a synchrotron is used to gather diffraction data. That data is then plugged into computer algorithms to produce 3D images of electronic density and atomic displacement.
Using a big data approach, Fohtung said, this technique can produce better images than traditional microscopes, giving researchers more information. It combines computational and experimental physics with materials science -- an intersection of his multiple areas of expertise.
"This approach is capable of seeing extremely small objects and discovering things we never thought existed about these materials and their uses," Fohtung said. "If you use lenses, there's a limit to what you can see. It's determined by the size of your lens, the nature of your lens, the curvature of your lens. Without lenses, our resolution is limited by just the wavelength of the radiation."
Journal Reference:
D. Karpov, Z. Liu, A. Kumar, B. Kiefer, R. Harder, T. Lookman, E. Fohtung. Nanoscale topological defects and improper ferroelectric domains in multiferroic barium hexaferrite nanocrystals. Physical Review B, 2019; 100 (5) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.100.054432
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 20 2019, @04:21PM (5 children)
On first skimming, it appeared that these researchers had discovered that nickel has magnetic properties. Actually reading it reveals that they have discovered how to harness some poorly understood magnetic properties of nickel when formed into nano-wires. Wonder how long it will take for this to replace current MRI's?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 20 2019, @04:25PM (1 child)
Yup, and it might be relevant to magnetic confinement fusion reactors.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Arik on Sunday October 20 2019, @04:32PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 20 2019, @04:46PM
Not going to happen, this IS potentially a big finding in materials science but it's not going to open any doors to room temperature superconductivity, if that's what you're thinking.
(Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Sunday October 20 2019, @08:13PM
It will take only a very small amount of time to replace current MRI's, but it will be an extremely long wait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @01:26AM
When I read it, I thought about improved hard disk drives. Don't some of them already use giant magnetostriction for the read/write heads? If this can give improved signal:noise ratio, then the bit density can go even higher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 21 2019, @05:09AM
Or "E-Fo", as friends & co-workers call him.