New Magnetic Phenomenon

Illustration of edge magnetism discovered in CrGeTe3 using nanoscale magnetic microscopy.
Credit: Ori Lerman

For physicists, exploring the realm of the very, very small is a wonderland. Totally new and unexpected phenomena are discovered in the nanoscale, where materials as thin as 100 atoms are explored. Here, nature ceases to behave in a way that is predictable by the macroscopic law of physics, unlike what goes on in the world around us or out in the cosmos.

Dr. Yonathan Anahory at Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)’s Racah Institute of Physics led the team of researchers, which included HU doctoral student Avia Noah. He spoke of his astonishment when looking at images of the magnetism generated by nano-magnets, “it was the first time we saw a magnet behaving this way,” as he described the images that revealed the phenomenon of “edge magnetism.”

The images showed that the magnetic material the HU researchers were studying only retained magnetism on its edge—in fact only within 10 nanometers of the edge (remember a human hair is around 100,000 nanometers). Their results were recently published in the prestigious journal Nano Letters.  READ MORE...