Spanish researchers have created the world’s thinnest solid magnet

A team of researchers led by the Institute of Nanoscience and Materials of Aragon has created the world’s thinnest solid magnet, which will have potential applications in technological devices that require a magnetic field, such as computer RAM or transistors, as they promote miniaturization thanks to their tiny size.

Fernando Bartolomé and Jorge Lobo from INMA (a joint institute of the Supreme Council of Scientific Research and the University of Zaragoza) are leading the study, published in the journal Nature Communications.

The magnet, CSIC explained, was created after seven years of research and marks a milestone in the study of magnetism and surface science, given that it was achieved over two decades of research by teams of scientists. the whole world.

It is the thinnest magnet that exists and will ever exist, with a specific magnetic direction, relatively high temperature and very difficult to demagnetize.

The achievement was to minimize the use of a hard magnet. Lobo explains that by combining iron molecules and atoms, it was possible to create a network in which the atoms are separated from each other by a fixed distance and have a magnetization direction perpendicular to the network.