'Fool's Gold' May be Valuable after All
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
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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