The mechanism that is responsible for ultra-high
magnetoresistance in molecular wires is possibly closely related to the biological compass used by some migratory birds to find their bearings in the geomagnetic field.
Not exact matches
They are conducting experiments to improve the
magnetoresistance of the device by fine - tuning the level of strain
in its magnetic structure, and they are also planning to apply their technique
in various other electronic components.
«We didn't know this large magnitude of «negative
magnetoresistance» was possible,» said Qiang Li, a physicist and head of the advanced energy materials group
in the department and a co-author on a paper describing these results just published
in the journal Nature Physics.
Because of the high magnetic field required to produce the
magnetoresistance effect, Kobayashi says, the material isn't ready to be used
in data storage devices.
The discovery, reported
in tomorrow's issue of Nature, relies on a phenomenon called colossal
magnetoresistance — a large drop
in a material's electrical resistance
in response to an applied magnetic field — that has previously been seen only at very low temperatures.
Last year's prize went to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for their discovery
in the late 1980s of giant
magnetoresistance, an effect that has allowed for the dramatic expansion
in the capacity of hard drives.
«There's this old empirical statement that if you make a metal cleaner and cleaner and cleaner, it results
in larger and larger
magnetoresistance,» said Paul Canfield, a senior scientist at Ames Laboratory and a Distinguished Professor and the Robert Allen Wright Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University.
The change
in electrical resistance through a magnetic field is called
magnetoresistance and is very important
in technology.
In particular, they measured a ten times larger
magnetoresistance as observed for CuMnAs.
Researchers
in condensed matter physics at Ames Laboratory had recently discovered an extremely large
magnetoresistance and a Dirac - node - arc feature
in PtSn4.
Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory compared similar materials and returned to a long - established rule of electron movement
in their quest to explain the phenomenon of extremely large
magnetoresistance (XMR),
in which the application of a magnetic field to a material results
in a remarkably large change
in electrical resistance.
In comparing these similar compounds, they ruled out Dirac - node - arc feature and electron - hole compensation as the mechanism to explain extremely large
magnetoresistance.
However, the ultra-high
magnetoresistance which has been measured
in Twente was achieved without any magnetic materials.
In this work, the researchers found another material, PdSn4, showing extremely large
magnetoresistance but a gapped out Dirac - node - arc feature.
And researchers
in Japan raised it to 600 %
in 2002 with the discovery of materials that carry out something called tunnel
magnetoresistance.
Numerous materials with extreme
magnetoresistance have been reported since the Cava lab first discovered extreme
magnetoresistance (originally named «large
magnetoresistance» by Nature editors before the research field supplanted it with the current term)
in WTe2 two years ago.
But
in particular, researchers
in the Cava lab noticed that five materials with extreme
magnetoresistance yet very different structures and chemical make - up all share the same characteristics when their resistance - temperature - applied - magnetic - field diagrams are measured.
A new study from the Cava lab has revealed a unifying connection between seemingly unrelated materials that exhibit extreme
magnetoresistance, the ability of some materials to drastically change their electrical resistance
in response to a magnetic field, a property that could be useful
in magnetic memory applications.
But now all those numbers pale
in comparison, as a paper published online today
in Science reports that molecular wires are capable of a 2000 %
magnetoresistance change at room temperature.
Tiny devices that take advantage of a recently discovered physical effect called extraordinary
magnetoresistance could be used
in blazingly fast computer disk drives with huge capacities and
in dozens of other applications involving the sensing of magnetic fields
The recent prediction and experimental realization of standard type - I Weyl fermions
in semimetals by two groups
in Princeton and one group
in IOP Beijing showed that the resistivity can actually decrease if the electric field is applied
in the same direction as the magnetic field, an effect called negative longitudinal
magnetoresistance.