In today's digital world, one of the most pressing technology needs is to find more and better efficient ways to store and process digital information. 

A recent breakthrough discovery of the world's first high-temperature single-molecule magnet (SMM) opens doors to future exciting developments in massive storage capacity increase in hard disks without increasing their physical size.

Before the publication of the study Magnetic Hysteresis up to 80 Kelvin in a Dysprosium Metallocene Single-Molecule Magnet led by Professor of Chemistry Richard Layfield at the University of Sussex in England, it was only possible to synthesize single-molecule magnets with blocking temperatures that were reached by cooling with considerable expensive and scarce liquid helium. 

The team at the University of Sussex in collaboration with Sun-Yat Sen University in China and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, reported a new single-molecule magnet (SMM) which is a type of material that retains magnetic information up to a characteristic blocking temperature.

In the paper, published in the journal Science, the scientists explain how they successfully designed and synthesized the first SMM with a blocking temperature above 77 K, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, which is both cheap and readily available.

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