Location: Sitterzaal 032
Time: 19:30 hrs

Magnetic effects in 'non' magnetic materials
All so called ‘non‐magnetic’ matter is of course in fact diamagnetic, but compared to ferro or paramagnetism this this effect is usually quite weak, and ignored. Diamagnetism leads to a magnetic moment that is opposed to the direction of the applied field and for anisotropic molecules (as most
molecules are) this gives rise to an orientational energy that is proportional to the magnetic field B^2 .
At high fields this effect is big enough to order and to study molecular matter, even of nanoscale dimensions. In addition, diamagnets are low field seekers, i.e. they experience a force on each individual molecule towards low magnetic fields (as opposed to paramagnets which are high field seekers), and this way matter can be levitated in high fields (simulated microgravity).
We will illustrate how these effects can be used in improving protein crystal growth, steering the chirality (handedness) of molecular systems, enhancing the mobility in organic field effect transistors, measuring elastic energies in selfassembled molecular molecular nanostructures and preparing transparent birefringent plastic filters.