A team of scientists, including two Indians with a head of Indian origin, have recently discovered magnetic superatoms, which someday may act as building blocks of next generation computers — faster, smaller and more powerful.

“Superatoms — cluster of atoms that possess some properties of the atoms in the periodic table — were known to be only of non-magnetic character. The two new sets discovered by us are magnetic and would be more stable,” said Dr Prasenjit Sen.

He along with his student Kalpataru Pradhan, are the Indian faces in the team credited for the revolutionary discovery attracting worldwide attention.

Both are associated with the Allahabad-based Harish Chandra Research Institute (HCRI), a premier research institute under the Department of Atomic Energy.

The other members of the team include Professor Shiv Khanna of Virginia Commonwealth University and Professor Mark Pederson of the Naval Research Laboratory (US).

Working on the concept for the last three years, the team has discovered two sets — one by combining vanadium and cesium and the other by manganese and gold. While the former set will have important consequences in the IT industry, the latter may play a significant role in the healthcare sector.

Published in the journal Nature Chemistry, the breakthrough, explain researchers, will be useful in electronic applications, where not just the charge of the electron is used but also the spin.

The researchers claim that the biggest achievement of this research, funded by the US Army, is the understanding of the physical or chemical principles that explains which atomic clusters — aggregate of atoms — may be possible candidates for magnetic superatoms.

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