Synthesizing the strong permanent ferromagnets vital to many technological applications requires the costly and environmentally harmful mining of rare-earth elements. But finding novel alternative compounds with similarly strong ferromagnetic properties is challenging. Tyler Slade of Ames National Laboratory in Iowa and his colleagues now show how adding transition metals to low-melting-temperature combinations of platinum and phosphorus yields a new crystalline material that exhibits strong ferromagnetic order at room temperature [1]. Their strategy offers a way to search for above-room-temperature ferromagnetic compounds that combine high-melting-temperature and low-boiling-temperature elements for use in solid-state memory devices, engines, and turbines.
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