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New Spin On Graphene Makes It Magnetic
intellitech writes "A team led by Professor Andre Geim, a recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize for graphene, has shown that electric current can magnetize graphene. The researchers found a new way to interconnect spin and charge by applying a relatively weak magnetic field to graphene and found that this causes a flow of spins in the direction perpendicular to electric current, making a graphene sheet magnetised."
This, is how they work!
I wonder if it would be possible to pulse magnetism through a long ribbon, creating a no moving parts lift mechanism for a space elevator?
Hey, that's great that they have a Nobel Prize for graphene, but isn't that... I don't know... a little specific?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
...is there anything it can't do?
Graphene is the best substance in the universe. I put it on my breakfast cereal in the morning, I use it for fuel in my hovercraft, it blocks the damaging UV rays from giving me spin cancer, my cat litter box is filled with it, and the sheets that tuck me in at night are woven from Graphene... I LOVE this stuff
Can you #@{& it?
It's almost like the summary is describing a different article.
I suppose one could construct a blow-up doll from thin sheets of graphene, but I don't see the practicality.
Can't drag the "Score" slider, so can't read any comments unless I want to click on each one. Doh. Web 2.0 sucks.
Well, most people "#@{&" carbon-based life, so...sorta.
Not contained in the most abundant molecule in the body, but still. Though continuing on that line of thought just made me very uneasy about grabbing a glass of water...
coming soon!
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Why silicon based you insensitive clod!
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
How does it work?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Get perpendicular?
How about just "making it magnetic?"
Magnetized (or magnetised) is a verb, that means, well, you look it up if you don't know what it means.
If "sleepified" was a verb meaning "putting someone to sleep" you wouldn't write "making him sleepified."
I assume the article author means _permanent_ magnets (and reading TFA confirms they talk about ferromagnetism), because otherwise any old piece of wire you pass an electric current through becomes a "magnet"
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
"It's almost like the summary is describing a different article" : because it is.
Though continuing on that line of thought just made me very uneasy about grabbing a glass of water...
...Because grabbing that glass of water is the closest thing we'll ever know, to "#@{&" a silicon-based life form.
if you put enough voltage across your water to overcome the insulating properties of the water and crack it into oxygen and hydrogen then yes the resulting ions will conduct.
but unless you have access to Gigavolts or so you just don't use absolutely pure water.
but your answer is yes any time (use the righthand rule to keep directions straight) you have current +motion you will have a magnetic field.
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Please people RTFA before you comment.
I'm no expert on this stuff but my interpretation of what is being discussed is that the use of vacancies in graphene allows interesting conduction properties and the control of the magnetic properties of the graphene in a manner that does not exist in metals.
From the article:
"The result would be a ferromagnet, like iron, but instead made only of carbon. Magnetism in graphene could lead to new types of nanoscale sensors of magnetic fields. And, when coupled with graphene's tremendous electrical properties, magnetism in graphene could also have interesting applications in the area of spintronics, which uses the magnetic moment of the electron, instead of its electric charge, to represent the information in a computer.
"This opens the possibility of 'defect engineering' in graphene -- plucking out atoms in the right places to design the magnetic properties you want," said Fuhrer.
I don't know about you but that does seem interesting to me.
Bitter and proud of it.
What next? If you run electricity "backwards" through it, you get negative gravity? Repulsor lifts and anti-grav sleds become real?
We insert it into nervous systems and grant telekinesis?