It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a cliche! No, it's a new type of oxide compound!
It sounds like boring stuff on the surface. But when researchers talk about the capabilities of this new oxide compound, the material sounds like it comes straight out of a comic book.
Researchers at Cornell University found that when you physically stretch europium titanate nanometers (a tiny amount of the element europium and mineral titanite), it takes on "super hero-like properties" that could revolutionize electronics.
When researchers stretched thin films of europium titanate across another type of oxide, they became highly electrically polarized and exhibited a permanent magnetic field. These two qualities almost never appear in a single material in nature. When they do, they are pretty weak by comparison.
The new compound that researchers developed is 1,000 times more powerful in terms of electrical polarity and permanent magnetism than anything that has ever been seen before.
This new approach could prove to be a key step toward the development of next-generation memory storage and superb magnetic field sensors, just two applications researchers have long dreamed about. And they didn't even have to call the Justice League to get it.
Image credit: iStockphoto
Tags: Chemistry, Materials, Nanomaterials, Nanotech
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