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Carbon Magnets At Room Temperature

Posted by chrisd on from the spin-me-right-round-baby dept.

Bolie writes: "Trying to make high temperature super conductors yielded an unexpected result. The pure carbon bucky ball material was put under pressure to make sheets. That worked. Picture microscopic bubble pack. But the result was a sheet that was magnetic at room temperature. It has not escaped the attention of the discoverer, Tatiana Makarova, that this might be useful for a non-metallic computer memory. The material is also lighter than metals, flexible and transparent. Lasers anyone?"

1 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. Wait I don't get it by Bugmaster · · Score: 1, Redundant
    The article says:
    But to her surprise, she found instead that the new material was magnetic even above 200 C. Until now, the highest temperature at which a non-metallic material was magnetic was 255 C.
    1. above 200 C < above 255 C. Do they mean, "below" ?
    2. 200 C is not exactly room-temperature. Water boils at 100 C, roughly
    Still, this is a pretty sweet discovery. I wonder how strong these magnets are - strong enough to build an ultra-light motor ?
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