Are there practical uses for materials with magnetochemical properties?

[Alkim]

Hi,

There are materials with almost any combination of properties. Turning to the combinations of chemical properties with others, such as mechanical, thermal and optical ones I can name a number of examples of materials (i.e. with mechanochemical, thermochemical and photochemical properties), but I can't think of any example of magnetochemical properties of practical use. Something like a material whose composition changes under magnetic field. Any idea ?

 

[chill_factor]

other than ferrofluids and self assembling magnetic nanoparticles, i don't think there is such a thing.

i'm curious about mechanochemical properties. off the top of my head I can't think of any other than necking in metals and crazing in polymers but those are just "normal" behaviors of materials under plastic deformation. Piezoelectrics don't count as producing voltage is not a chemical or structural change. however, they have to exist somehow as a protein of some sort, otherwise humans would not be able to sense pressure with our hands.

 

[Alkim]

So, no suggestions?

 

[Graniar]

Do you mean changing chemical bonds configuration in the magnetic field presence?
I suppose extremely big fields required for this.
If there any effect in such a fields, I think, it would be related to Zeeman effect.

May be for some bound cases a few T is enough, ie shifting some phase transition temperature, I don't know

 

[Alkim]

Do you mean changing chemical bonds configuration in the magnetic field presence?
I suppose extremely big fields required for this.
If there any effect in such a fields, I think, it would be related to Zeeman effect.

May be for some bound cases a few T is enough, ie shifting some phase transition temperature, I don't know

That's exactly what I was thinking about, may be an extreme magnetic splitting of orbitals could end up breaking bonds in a molecule. What if we put a very sensitive explosive, such as a heavy-metal fulminate, in a very strong magnetic field ?

I have done a search for the relation of chemistry with the Paschen-Back effect (the high-field limit of Zeeman effect) and I have found an article that seems to talk about similar problems but I have not had the chance to download it yet:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cr00091a003

E.g. they speak about magnetocatalytic orto/para-hydrogen conversion, so it seems we are on a good track. The article is from 1988 so for sure there must be more related work.

If anybody has any additional information I will be very happy to learn about it.