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Carbon Magnets At Room Temperature
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?"
First off, I find it hilarious what we physicists end up naming different molecules and ensemble configurations.
Once again it goes to show that even though we're trying to do the right thing in the lab, sometimes bad things happen, but typically we're able to come out with something in the experiment that is actually worthwhile. Crazy how that works eh?
Nonetheless, there is some pretty cool research at the University of Virginia in bucky ball related research. If anyone is interested, check out http://www.phys.virginia.edu
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Why is any new discovery automatically thrown into the PC composnents arena, even when there is no actual connection?
It's a magnet, think SUPER-MOTOR.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Transparent as in transparent aluminium, ala Trek? Can I build my whale tank now? ;)
Also, Makarova's material is flexible and transparent, properties that could make it useful for storing data when a laser is used to record on it. It might also be possible to record data at unprecedented densities.
Man, this is really going to piss off Hillary Rosen...
What about a new 'cool' translusent colored Fridge magnet!
Actually, no. What the article was saying was that the material is the first non-metallic material that was magnetic at room temperature (meaning that other non-magnetic materials weren't, at least not at room temperature). The point about the material being magnetic even above 200C was about the material's Curie point (above which the material stops being magnetic) being much higher than any other material, the previous record being 255C which was held by a different form of buckyballs. So this material is interesting because it's the first non-metallic material to be magnetic at room temperature and has a higher Curie point than any other non-metallic material to date.
Apparently, the material's magnetism could be linked to unpaired electrons, which can sustain a magnetic field when their spins are aligned (in this case there are unpaired electrons). One possibility is that they bond in triangular groups of three, which would provide for unpaired spins.
Although, to be used as computer memory it would have to have uniform magnetism, not just in pockets. But either way it's a significant step forward.
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When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.
- room temperature.: Aound 21C.
- the new material was magnetic even above 200 C..The word "even" seems to imply that it is a feat to go above a certain temperature . Which implies that with higher temperature, materials tend to lose their magnetism (Curie point). Which implies that the material is also magnetic for all temperatures below 200 C. Which includes 21C, i.e. room temperature. Probably, the reason for the
strange formulation was that the researcher didn't have any oven handy which went over 200 C, or that any higher temperature fried his magnetism measuring equipment, or whatever. So he was just saying that at 200 C it was keeping
its magnetism, and that it was likely that it would keep it even beyond that mark.
- Until now, the highest temperature at which a non-metallic material was magnetic was 255 C. The words "until now" means "all materials known before" this one was discovered. Meaning that the 255 C refers to a different material. Oh, and btw, 255 C (that's minus 255) is below room temperature.
So where is the contradiction?... to wrap microscopic hardware parts. Finally we've found a solution to that one!
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
They used a Soft Hyphen ( or ) character instead of a minus sign. Browsers are not supposed to display a Soft Hyphen unless the line is broken at that point.
The interesting thing about buckyballs is that their bonding is somewhat of a cross between the two: it is a polyaromatic (like graphite) but it is a molecular solid (similar to, but not exactly like, diamond).
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The wealthy smoke the real stuff.
Has anyone discovered a way to reliably make large quantities of Buckyballs? Last time I looked into it, it was very hard... They were very expensive and only available in small quantities for experimentation.
- US National Labs rotating Java model (doesn't show the bonds though).
- loads of static models at Rice.edu.
Nice one Mr.Buckminster....sig
Right, so yet another possible way to store lots of data. We hear about these all the time (holographic memory, molecular storage etc.), but when are we actually going to get some of this - at the moment everyone still seems to be working on Winchester drives and semiconductor memory.
Is all this just pie in the sky, or are people actually producing devices that use these exotic storage methods? I figure this is about the best place to ask.
Hooray! One more thing you don't need metals for!
So far, Carbon is good for hardness (diamond), tensile strength (aramid fiber, buckytubes), lubrication (graphite), electrical conductivity (buckytubes), and now it can even be used for magnetic memory, and presumably for transformer cores, and antennae.
When NanoTech hits in a big way, I suspect that we'll have a major issue with depletion of atmospheric CO2.
BTW, anyone know of a form of Carbon for that's good for optical fiber, or do we just continue to rely on Silicon for that?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's a mistake in the HTML, the 250 should be -250, but they put a soft hyphen in instead of a minus sign or a dash.
By writing to a particular memory cell, light passing through that location may be polarized differently because of the different magnetic field. This could then be used to verify the particular state it is in. This could be a very fast way to read the memory.
Actualy NASA uses/used a form of core memory involving plated wires, for non-volatile memory in spacecraft. Seems resonable that fullereens would be stronger than the ferrite materials used in standard core memory, making it easier to make smaller arrays of core.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I figure most geeks on slashdot already know what a buckyball looks like; just in case, for the U.S. readers, this means soccerball-shaped...
It is absolutely amazing to see something like this happening. Upon entry on a research program most science programs I knew required the applicant to fill-in a form stating:
- what the project will be
- budget requirements
- chronogram
- publishing chronogram
- what the results will be
Now I wonder how many years of tenure one needs to be allowed to have unexpected results... *grin*Absolute zero is -273.15C (or is it .16)
or 0K There is no such thing as 'degrees kelvin'; the proper way to say it is 'zero kelvins'.
And this discovery has absolutely nothing to do with superconductivity; only that they were trying to produce a superconductor when they discovered it was magnetic. This is not an advancement in superconductivity. They didn't produce a superconductor. That's obvious even without reading the article...
Also, you are correct about superconductors.. but... the reason microprocessors work is because they are full of SEMIconductors... transistors... you HAVE to have resistance.. you can't build logic with pure superconductors.
There is a bug in some browsers that fail to display the - sign. The articl may appear to say the previous temp was 255c when it actually says(look in the source) -255c.
I don't know how to post a story update, so I'll do this here.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on