Prague: Scientists have finally discovered a new type of magnet they thought didn’t exist. The team that discovered this phenomenon, called alter magnetism, says that this magnet can be used to make better electronic devices.
Altermagnets are the third type of magnetism, after ferromagnets (the type found in kitchen refrigerators) and antiferromagnets (first discovered by the French physicist Louis Neill in the 1930s).
Experimental evidence of ultramagnetism was obtained at the Swiss Light Source (SLS) in collaboration with scientists from the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Paul Scherer Institute in Switzerland.
This magnet was first proposed in 2019 by a team of scientists from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Republic and the University of Mainz in Germany.
Professor Thomas Jungworth of the Institute of Physics at the Czech Academy of Sciences, which led the research, said that what people thought was impossible was actually possible. And it’s not something that’s found in a few obscure materials. Rather, it exists in the many crystals that exist in people’s drawers.
While the discovery ensures improvements in next-generation computers and electronic devices, the researchers believe it will also improve the understanding of condensed matter physics, which could lead to breakthroughs in the field of spintronics.
