Researchers at the MagLab are making discoveries today that will lead to the technologies of tomorrow. Whether a member of one of our robust in-house research groups or one of the nearly 1,400 outside scientists who do experiments here annually, MagLab researchers understand how high magnetic fields lead to making big discoveries.
Seeking the most powerful magnetic fields on Earth, scientists and engineers from across the world come to the MagLab to explore promising new materials, solve energy challenges and grow our understanding of living things. This kind of research has played a critical role in developing new technologies used every day – from electric lights and computers to motors, plastics, high-speed trains and MRI. Find out more by exploring our research initiatives, learning about our interdisciplinary research, or digging deeper into the hundreds of publications generated annually by MagLab researchers.
Research Initiatives
MATERIALS
Scientists use our magnets to explore semiconductors, superconductors, newly-grown crystals, buckyballs and materials from the natural world — research that reveals the secret workings of materials and empowers us to develop new technologies.
ENERGY
Scientists here are working to optimize petroleum refining, advance potential bio-fuels such as pine needles and algae, and fundamentally change the way we store and deliver energy by developing better batteries.
LIFE
With the world’s strongest MRI magnet, scientists here study everything from living animals to individual cells, from proteins to disease-fighting molecules found in plants and animals — work that could improve treatment of AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
Latest Science Highlight
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Using Magnetic Resonance to Probe Lipid Synthesis in Response to Ketogenic Diet
18 November 2020
Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and its progression to more serious diseases will become the main cause for liver transplant in the next 5 years. Here, researchers used deuterium magnetic resonance to study dietary influences on lipid synthesis demonstrating that high fat ketogenic diets significantly slow de novo lipogenesis, a process by which excess carbohydrates are covered into fatty acids and stored as triacylglycerols.
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Spontaneous "Valley Magnetization" in an Atomically-thin Semiconductor
18 November 2020
Interactions between electrons underpin some of the most interesting – and useful -- effects in materials science and condensed-matter physics. This work demonstrates that, in the new family of so-called "monolayer semiconductors" that are only one atomic layer thick, electron-electron interactions can lead to the sudden and spontaneous formation of a magnetized state, analogous to the appearance of magnetism in conventional materials like iron.
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Prefractionation of Intact Proteins for Mass Spectrometry
16 October 2020
Analysis of intact proteins using mass spectrometry is a difficult task that can be simplified by prefractionation, a process in which protein mixtures are separated into simpler fractions based on size. Here, researchers developed a new method, PEPPI-MS, which uses low-cost materials and common lab equipment to make an important protein separation strategy widely available.
Featured Publications
Using Magnetic Resonance to Probe Lipid Synthesis in Response to Ketogenic Diet , M.S. Muyyarikkandy, et al., The FASEB Journal, 2020;00:1–18 See Science Highlight or Read online
Spontaneous "Valley Magnetization" in an Atomically-thin Semiconductor, J. Li, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 125, 147602 (2020) See Science Highlight or Read online
Spin-Charge Interconversion at Near-Terahertz Frequencies, P. Vaidya, Science, 368, 160-165 (2020) See Science Highlight or Read online
Tunable Weyl Fermions in Chiral Tellurene in High Magnetic Fields, G. Qiu, Nature Nanotechnology, 15, 585–591 (2020) See Science Highlight or Read online
Deuterium Magnetic Resonance Can Detect Cancer Metabolism by Measuring the Formation of Deuterated Water, R. Mahar, Nature Scientific Reports, 10 (1), 8885 (2020) See Science Highlight or Read online
High magnetic fields reveal hidden magnetism in a cuprate superconductor, M. Frachet, Nature Physics, 16, 1745-2481 (2020) See Science Highlight or Read online
Smart Non-Linear Transport Technique Expands the Frontier of Superconductor Research, M. Leroux., Physical Review Applied, 11, 054005 (2019) See Science Highlight or Read online
Inducing Magnetic Ring Currents in Non-Magnetic Aromatic Molecules: A Finding From the 25 T Split-Florida Helix , B. Kudisch, et al., Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, 117 (21), 11289-11298 (2020) See Science Highlight or Read online
Molecular magnetic building blocks , J.-L. Liu, et al., Angew. Chem., February (2020) See Science Highlight or Read online
Exploring Topological Semimetals in High Magnetic Fields , J. Liu, et al., Phys. Rev. B, 100, 195123 (2019) See Science Highlight or Read online
MRI detects brain responses to Alzheimer’s disease plaque deposits and inflammation, L.M. Colon-Perez, et al., NeuroImage, 202, 116138 (2019) See Science Highlight or Read online
Analytical tool for in vivo triple quantum MR signals, V.D. Schepkin Zeitschrift fur Medizinische Physik, 29 (4), 326-336 (2019) See Science Highlight or Read online