Posted on Monday, April 03 2006 @ 6:01 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
IBM researchers at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California have developed a new technology to explore and control magnetism at the atomic level.
"We can now position atoms and then measure and control their magnetic interactions within precisely designed structures," said IBM researcher Andreas Heinrich.
Researchers built a chain of 10 manganese atoms and measured how the magnetic properties changed as each new atom was added.
They found that a chain containing an odd number of atoms had magnetism, but chains with an even number of atoms did not.
More info at
VNU.
