The Little Book of Irish Science SFI Little Book of Irish Science | Page 19

The emergence
of a new alloy
A new alloy combining manganese, ruthenium and
gallium, aptly named MRG, has been developed by
Prof Michael Coey and team at the Science Foundation
Ireland funded AMBER (Advanced Materials and
Bioengineering Research) centre in Trinity College
Dublin. MRG, a ‘zero moment half metal’, is a world first
material that is extremely magnetic on the inside, but
seen from the outside, it appears only weakly magnetic if
at all. Magnetism lies at the heart of our capacity to store
and retrieve data, making MRG an exciting new player
in the field of superfast memory and big data storage.
www.ambercentre.ie
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