Two common metals that are not magnetic — copper and manganese — can be transformed into magnets: a surprising effect that involves combining thin films of the metals with carbon-based organic molecules.
The magnetism is weak and fades away after a few days, but the discovery could lead to new kinds of hybrid metal–organic magnets that might be useful in applications such as medical imaging, says Oscar Cespedes of the University of Leeds, UK, who led the work1 reported on 5 August in Nature.
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