High-Field Resistive Magnet Developed

The 35-tesla magnet, installed at the U.S. National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (Tallahassee, FL, USA), incorporates "Florida-Bitter” technology invented at the lab, and is an upgrade of an existing 30-Tesla magnet and surpasses the earlier record of 33 Tesla, also held by the laboratory.

Tesla is a measurement of the strength of a magnetic field; 1 Tesla is equal to 20,000 times the Earth's magnetic field. Typical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines in hospitals provide fields in the range of 1 to 3 Tesla. Thus the increase from 30-35 Tesla in the new magnet represents a 17% increase, equal to the magnetic force of two MRI machines.

Higher and more stable fields are what the lab's users, who come from all over the world, require. The magnet lab is funded by the state of Florida and the U.S. National Science Foundation to provide the international research community with the highest magnetic fields possible to perform research in all areas of science. Use of the magnets is free as long as researchers agree to share the results of their work.

The majority of the magnets and instrumentation used at the magnet lab are developed by laboratory staff and operated by in-house scientists who collaborate with the hundreds of scientists who visit each year. The 35-Tesla magnet, which has a 32 mm, or 1.25-inch, experimental space, will be used mainly for physics and materials science research.

Magnetism is a vital component of many scientific developments and a surprising amount of the latest technologies, including computer memory and disk drives. High-field magnets now are used along with lasers and microscopes as essential research tools for investigational studies. Long used by the physics community to understand the essential nature of matter and electronic structures, magnetic fields now are used by biologists, chemists, and even pharmacists to better understand multifaceted molecules and tissues, and are responsible for the development of the MRI technology that has changed the face of modern medicine.

The laboratory houses both resistive--so-called "powered”--magnets that use both electricity and cooled water to operate and superconducting magnets that, once brought to full field, require little or no electrical power to run. In July 2005, the lab commissioned a world-record, 900-megahertz, wide-bore nuclear magnetic resonance magnet, which is expected to provide significant discoveries in the fields of chemical and biomedical research.






Related Links:
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory