China builds record -breaking magnets - but not without price
China builds record -breaking magnets - but not without price
china now houses the world's most powerful resistant magnets, which produced a magnetic field that is more than 800,000 times stronger than that of the earth.
On September 22, the magnet in the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (Shhmff) held a constant magnetic field of 42.02 Tesla at the Hefei Institutes for Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This milestone almost exceeds the record of 41.4 Tesla, which was set up in 2017 by a resistant magnet in the US National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) in Tallahasee, Florida. Resistive magnets consist of wrapped metal wires and are used in magnetic systems worldwide.
The record holder from China lays the basis for the construction of reliable magnets, which can maintain ever greater magnetic fields. This would enable the researchers to gain surprising new physical knowledge, says Joachim Wosnitza, a physicist at the Dresden Hochfeldlabor in Germany.
The resistive magnet, which is open to international users, is China's second significant contribution to global endeavors to create ever higher magnetic fields. In 2022, the hybrid magnet of the SHMFF, which combines a resistive magnet with a superconductor, produced a field of 45.22 Tesla and is considered the most powerful functioning permanent magnet in the world.
research tool
high-field magnets are useful tools for the detection of hidden properties of progressive materials such as Supraliter materials that direct electrical current without heat loss at very low temperatures. High fields also offer the opportunity to discover completely new physical phenomena, says Marc-Henri Julien, a solid-state physicist at the National Laboratory for Intense Magnetic Fields in Grenoble, France. "You can create or manipulate new matter," explains Julien.
High fields are also useful for experiments based on very sensitive measurements, as they increase the resolution and make it easier to recognize weak phenomena, says Alexander Eaton, a solid -state physicist at the University of Cambridge, Great Britain. "Every additional Tesla is exponentially better than the last one," he adds.
Guangli Kuang, a physicist who specializes in high magnetic fields on the SHMFF, explains that the team has spent years to modify the magnet to achieve the latest record. "It was not easy to do that," he says.
reliable, but costly
resistive magnets are an older technology, but can maintain magnetic fields over longer periods than their newer hybrids and fully suturing counterparts, explains Wosnitza. Your magnetic fields can also be increased much faster, which makes it a variety of experimental tools. "You can simply turn a switch and switch from zero Tesla to high fields within minutes," he says.
The big disadvantage of resistant magnets is the high power consumption, which makes it expensive, says Eaton. The resistive magnet of the SHMFF pulled 32.3 megawatts of electricity to create its record -breaking field. "You have to have a very good scientific reason to justify this resource," explains Eaton.
This challenge drives the race for the development of hybrid and fully suturing magnets, which can generate high fields with less energy. In 2019, the NHMFL researchers built a miniaturized, proof-of-concept superconducting magnets that briefly a Field of 45.5 Tesla maintained, and currently develop a larger super-leading magnet with 40 Tesla for experiments. The team at the SHMFF builds a hybrid magnet with 55 Tesla. Although these newer magnets are expected to be more cost -effective than their resistant predecessors, they bring their own challenges with them: they are more expensive to manufacture and require complicated cooling systems, explains engineer Mark Bird, co -manager of magnetic science and technology at the NHMFL. "The technology is still being developed and the costs are not yet clear," says Bird.