In the quest for tiny robots that can navigate through our bodies, Purdue University engineers have developed a new magnetic mini-robot named microTUM. The robot moves by tumbling end over end over bumps, trenches and hills, in wet or dry conditions.
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The electric, magnetic, physical or chemical properties of a 3D material can radically change when it's reduced to two dimensions. Now researchers have found the first material that retains magnetism in its 2D form, opening the door to thinner electronics.
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Magnets are hard to come by. In fact, only about five percent of all known inorganic compounds exhibit even a little magnetism. So instead of searching the world for new magnets, researchers have recently synthesized two of their own, from a list of 236,115 potential creations.
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Scientists have developed a method of getting soft robotic objects to move using directed magnetic fields. They say that it could be used for applications ranging from remotely-triggered drug-delivery pumps within the body, to the development of remotely deployable structures.
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By studying ancient pottery handles, researchers have determined that the Earth's magnetic field isn't in imminent danger of reversing and triggering a mass extinction event, but has fluctuated over the millennia with the field spiking in the 8th century BCE.
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Some magnetic particles take on certain attributes when they come in small enough packages, and scientists have now found a way to scale up these particles while retaining their desirable magnetic properties, making it possible to commandeer them for the purposes of life-saving drug delivery.
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Ferrolic uses ferrofluid to tell the time. This mysterious liquid reacts to electromagnets, meaning it can be manipulated to form numbers like an ever-evolving Rorschach test.
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By altering the quantum interactions of the electrons in the atoms of a metal's atoms, scientists from the University of Leeds have generated magnetism in metals that aren’t normally magnetic. This move could one day reduce our reliance on rare or toxic metals in a range of fields,
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A new class of magnets discovered by scientists working at the University of Maryland (UMD) change in volume whilst in the process of magnetization. As this is fundamentally different to the phenomenon discovered by Joule some 175 years ago, the new magnets are called "non-Joulian."
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Graphene is extremely strong for its weight, it's electrically and thermally conductive, and it's chemically stable ... but it isn't magnetic. Now, however, a team from the University of California, Riverside has succeeded in making it so.
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