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A TRANSPARENT, flexible magnetic material made from an exotic form of carbon
could turn out to be the dream computer memory. The substance, which was
discovered accidentally by a Russian physicist hunting for high-temperature
superconductors, is the first non-metallic magnet to work at room
temperature.

Tatiana Makarova, working at Ume氓 University in Sweden, discovered the
material while experimenting with buckyballs, football-shaped molecules made up
of 60 carbon atoms. By heating and compressing the molecules, she forced them to
join together in layers like sheets of bubble wrap, because she thought these
might be able to superconduct.

But to her surprise, she found instead that the new material was magnetic
even above 200 掳C. Until now, the highest temperature at which a
non-metallic material was magnetic was 鈥�255 掳C. This record was held
by a different form of buckyballs.

Organic magnets could be important because they are much lighter than their
metallic cousins. Also, Makarova鈥檚 material is flexible and transparent,
properties that could make it useful for storing data when a laser is used to
record on it. It might also be possible to record data at unprecedented
densities.

Exactly why the material is magnetic is not yet clear. Makarova believes that
unpaired electrons may play a crucial role, since they can sustain a magnetic
field when their spins are aligned. One possibility is that the magnetism stems
from buckyballs bonding in triangular groups of three.

鈥淚n this configuration, there can be unpaired spins,鈥� she says. Her team is
currently comparing buckyball layers made in different ways to try to find
out.

Robert Blinc, an expert on molecular magnets at the University of Ljubljana
in Slovenia, says the work is a giant step forward. He says it is not yet clear
whether the magnetic properties are uniform throughout the structure or occur in
clumps. 鈥淏ut in any case it is extremely important,鈥� he says.