Water is not usually thought of as a magnetic material. But a new study led by researchers at Tohoku University’s Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, in collaboration with National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei Tech), has found that tiny shifts in the orientation of water molecules can flip on magnetic partnerships between metal ions that are not even directly bonded to each other.

The discovery offers chemists a surprising new tool: instead of wiring magnetic ions together with strong chemical bonds, they may be able to use something as simple and common as hydrogen bonding to link them up. The work is published in the journal Inorganic Chemistry.

“We found that distant magnetic moments can interact via hydrogen bonding, and these interactions can be controlled by the orientation of water molecules,” said Kazuhiro Nawa, associate professor at Tohoku University’s Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials. “This gives us a chemical route to tune magnetism without directly connecting the magnetic ions through strong bonds.”