Hydrogen is taken in consideration in replacing fuel-like gasoline and other petroleum products and ultimately even in the process of thermonuclear fusion.

A team of researchers from the US, the UK and Germany has been the first to make a magnetic material constructed from strongest natural known hydrogen bond. Hydrogen bonds are behind many of the properties of water and for holding together the DNA double helix. Despite this, hydrogen bonds are normally rather weak but the new molecule contains the bifluoride ion in which a hydrogen atom is tightly bound to two fluorine atoms. This new bound type makes the new magnet be stable up to 200 degrees Celsius.

The magnetic properties of the new molecule were assessed using muons by a team at Oxford University, headed by Stephen Blundell, Professorial Fellow in Physics at Mansfield College. "Muons are tiny, sub-atomic particles which can be implanted into materials. They behave like tiny gyroscopes and spin round when they experience a magnetic field." said Blundell.

Using this method - which is uniquely sensitive to magnetism in these types of magnetic material - the scientists discovered that there is no overall magnetism at room temperature; however, as the temperature is lowered, copper magnetic moments begin to align, producing a microscopic magnetic field visible to the implanted muons below a temperature of 1.54 Kelvin.

These experiments were made at ISIS, the world's most intense source of pulsed muons, located in Oxfordshire, UK.

The research team hopes that the magnetic studies will help them understand to what extent bifluoride units and their hydrogen bonds influence the spin arrangement on close magnetic centers.

Image credit: University of Oxford