{"id":232522,"date":"2026-03-04T01:22:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/liquid-crystal-phase-in-antiferromagnets-can-be-detected-electrically"},"modified":"2026-03-04T01:22:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:22:06","slug":"liquid-crystal-phase-in-antiferromagnets-can-be-detected-electrically","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/liquid-crystal-phase-in-antiferromagnets-can-be-detected-electrically","title":{"rendered":"Liquid crystal phase in antiferromagnets can be detected electrically"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/liquid-crystal-phase-in-antiferromagnets-can-be-detected-electrically.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The best candidate for next-generation magnetic devices\u2014technology that can power, store, sense or transport information\u2014may be, counterintuitively, antiferromagnets. Today, the most widely used magnetic materials are ferromagnets, which exhibit permanent magnetization and therefore strongly attract each other. Their opposite, called antiferromagnetic materials, exhibit no net magnetization at all. Despite a net zero magnetic field, they offer appealing properties that would solve the challenges of current magnetic technologies, like stray magnetic field generation or slow operation.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a team led by researchers at Tohoku University has taken the first step toward developing antiferromagnetic technology. The researchers found, for the first time, that under a current, antiferromagnets can exhibit a phase of matter known as \u201cliquid-crystal,\u201d or nematic, that can be electrically detected. Their study is published in <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41467-025-67229-y\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Nature Communications<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe antiferromagnets we work with possess a fundamentally different symmetry from conventional ferromagnets, meaning that they are not simply an alternative material platform, but a new class of magnets expected to host entirely new electronic functionalities,\u201d said corresponding author Hideaki Sakai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The best candidate for next-generation magnetic devices\u2014technology that can power, store, sense or transport information\u2014may be, counterintuitively, antiferromagnets. Today, the most widely used magnetic materials are ferromagnets, which exhibit permanent magnetization and therefore strongly attract each other. Their opposite, called antiferromagnetic materials, exhibit no net magnetization at all. Despite a net zero magnetic field, they [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}