{"id":247086,"date":"2026-11-11T07:15:07","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T13:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/water-molecules-turn-out-to-be-secret-messengers-for-magnetism"},"modified":"2026-11-11T07:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T13:15:07","slug":"water-molecules-turn-out-to-be-secret-messengers-for-magnetism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/water-molecules-turn-out-to-be-secret-messengers-for-magnetism","title":{"rendered":"Water molecules turn out to be secret messengers for magnetism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Water is not usually thought of as a magnetic material. But a new study led by researchers at Tohoku University\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/inocaj\/article\/65\/44\/25678\/5428710\/Formation-of-Antiferromagnetic-Spin-Dimer-Induced\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Inorganic Chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe found that distant magnetic moments can interact via hydrogen bonding, and these interactions can be controlled by the orientation of water molecules,\u201d said Kazuhiro Nawa, associate professor at Tohoku University\u2019s Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials. \u201cThis gives us a chemical route to tune magnetism without directly connecting the magnetic ions through strong bonds.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Water is not usually thought of as a magnetic material. But a new study led by researchers at Tohoku University\u2019s 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 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247086","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=247086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}