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."

Comments

Magnets

[xMrFishx]

This, is how they work!

Pulsed Magnetism

[tmosley]

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?

Nobel Prize for graphene

[gmhowell]

Hey, that's great that they have a Nobel Prize for graphene, but isn't that... I don't know... a little specific?

Re:Nobel Prize for graphene

[maswan]

If you are nitpicking, how about the fact that the team is not headed by Geim at all, but by Physics Professor Michael S. Fuhrer of the UMD Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials. The only mention of Geim is as one of the two recipients of the Nobel Prize in physics for their graphene work.

Carbon...

[Haedrian]

...is there anything it can't do?

bad summary, interesting article

[artor3]

• The team was lead by Michael Fuhrer, not Andrew Geim. The only relationship Geim has to this article is that he received a Nobel for discovering a process to create the material that these researched used (i.e. graphene)
• It's not electric current that magnetizing the graphene, it's small impurities - specifically, gaps in the lattice. The magnetism is controllable by tuning the number and location of the impurities, which is what makes this potentially useful
• This doesn't have anything to do with spin, except insofar as all electromagnetism topics do. Spintronics is only mentioned at the very end of the article as something this "could also have interesting applications in".

It's almost like the summary is describing a different article.

Re:bad summary, interesting article

[oldhack]

You know how people here love to dump on science journos, but the stuff that people submit here seem even worse.

Graphene fridge magnets on ThinkGeek

[Locutus]

coming soon!

LoB

Semantics, they work

[Kazymyr]

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"

Re:Dur!

[fenix849]

Some parts of my girlfriend are silicone based.

I'm kidding, this is slashdot, i don't have one.