An international team of researchers led by the Institute of Nanoscience and Materials of Aragon (INMA-CSIC-UNIZAR), a joint institute of the Supreme Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) and the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR), has created a powerful atomic magnet for the first time in the world. It is the thinnest magnet that exists or could ever exist, with a specific magnetic direction, a relatively high temperature, and is very difficult to demagnetize.
Real image of an atomically thin two-dimensional metal-organic mesh obtained using a tunneling microscope. Photo: INMA-TSNITs-UNIZAR.
After seven years of research, this discovery represents a clear advance in the cross-cutting fields of magnetism and surface science, given that it is a goal that has been worked on by various teams of scientists from around the world for more than two decades. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.
The discovery is a worldwide milestone and has potential applications in technological devices that require a specific magnetic field, such as computer random access memory.