German Lab Generates the Strongest Magnetic Field Ever Created

By Clay Dillow Posted 06.28.2011 at 11:59 am 10 Comments

Copper Coils A U.S. Navy sailor coils wire for an electric motor aboard a U.S. carrier. By similarly coiling and wrapping copper to create powerful and durable electromagnets, German researchers have generated the world's highest magnetic field. U.S. Navy

Call it another victory for German design. Researchers in Dresden have set a new world record for the strongest magnetic field ever manufactured at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory Dresden (HZDR). Using a two-layer, 440-pound copper coil the size of a water bucket, they managed to coax 91.4 teslas from their creation for just a few milliseconds, surpassing the previous record of 89 teslas.

That’s a lot of teslas. Your standard high-power copper coil would be torn apart at something like 25 teslas, the researchers say. That’s because the magnetic field and the electric current that creates it work at cross purposes at higher energies. The current running through the coil generates the magnetic field, but the magnetic field pushes back against the electrons flowing through the coil. The stronger the current, the more the magnetic field pushes back, and once the current crosses a certain threshold the magnet will quite literally tear itself apart.

But we need bigger, badder magnets. The higher and more precise magnetic fields we can produce in the lab, the better we can test and characterize the properties of the materials we create, things like superconductors that shuttle electrons around with zero resistance. In order to make their magnet withstand the pressures of 90-plus teslas, the HZDR team wrapped the coil in a specially fabricated corset made of high-tensile fibers usually used in body armor.

That gave them a small coil with enough strength to stand up to 50 teslas for a brief two-hundredths of a second. So they did what seems natural and added another magnet, wrapping a second, 12-layer copper coil also swathed in a fiber corset around the first. This larger magnet can only withstand a 40 tesla field, but combined with the other 50 teslas the combo magnet can achieve more than 90 teslas.

The magnet has already drawn interest from materials scientists around the globe, and the HZDR aims to produce another six magnets over the next few years to accommodate all the researchers who want time on the devices. The record replaces one set by American researchers at Los Alamos National Labs that had stood for years.

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10 Comments

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JediMindset

06/28/11 at 9:37 pm

magnetic engines should be available but company's wouldn't make much revenue off of it. they require no gasoline. and give off zero pollution. this could in theory be used to power entire cities and even the entire world if we all worked together on it.

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ekisom

06/28/11 at 11:46 pm

may the force be with you

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Joneshopper

06/29/11 at 1:14 am

To JediMidset: it is a good alternative but you have to remember that you still need to generate electricity to power magnetic motors. Typically you need high ampage even for HTS coil motors. Conventional high resistance coils have lots of resistance so you need lots of voltage as well. So you'll have to rely on power stations...which means there will still be a lot of indirect emissions. Solar panels and wind turbine will be needed on a gigantic scale to carry this burden. Won't be enough.

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blitz32

06/29/11 at 7:45 am

"The current running through the coil generates the magnetic field, but the magnetic field pushes back against the electrons flowing through the coil. The stronger the current, the more the magnetic field pushes back"would this also be the same process by which stars are born,cause if dense molecular gas cloud 2-3 lightyears wide were moving pass or even agaisnt another masive gas cloud would the friction be enought to create an electrical current intern a magnetic field,then the magnetic field pushing back against the electrons cause the cloud to collapse into a star,also a great scales can this proceess not acount for dark energy and dark mater cause they found magnetic froth at the solr system edge..

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michael taylor

06/29/11 at 10:36 am

@Joneshopper

"So you'll have to rely on power stations...which means there will still be a lot of indirect emissions. "

Im not very fond of this argument. Its very true but its not as bad as people make it out to be.

For example, if we got all the gas cars converted to electricity or hydrogen. Even though all that energy still needs to be generated at a power plant. At least we have a major piece of infrastructure emission free.

From there we can continue to improve the power plants over time.

Its a lot easier and economical to focus research on improving a non mobile power plant that sits in one place then it is to try to improve millions of mobile units.

Mobile technology is hard, stationary technology not so much. So lets take the mobile technology out of the equation.

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JediMindset

06/30/11 at 2:15 pm

@Joneshopper
magnetic energy is there. so we should use it. its easy to use and cost efficient. that's all that matters. if we start improving on ways to use it than in the future it will be a piece of cake. combining wind/solar/ocean current/magnetic energy would kick oils ass in the future.

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lucky1997

06/30/11 at 5:11 pm

Michael, you should be instead wary of the argument of centralized production.

Consider the KISS principle: when producing energy in a centralized way you have a lot of processes going on.

1) Energy is produced in the power plant
2) The produced energy is used to produce Hydrogen
3) The Hydrogen is used in fuel cells to produce electrical energy
4) The electrical energy propels a car

Each passage will lose energy due to efficiency. Even considering an 80% efficiency for each passage (Which is high) you end up with an overall efficiency of about 40%.

This is better than the about 30% of internal combustion engines but while it easy to boost 30% efficiency will not be easy to increase the efficiency of an extremely complex process.

Just connect a turbo to the exhaust of a car and use the rotating turbine to create electrical energy and you have a very nice way of recovering part of the 70% wasted in heat by the internal combustion engine.

To minimize the electricity lost in the grid instead would have a huge cost and end up impacting only a small portion of the process.

Keeping it simple is always better.

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OrdinaryMouse

07/01/11 at 11:47 pm

The largest magnetic field produced in a laboratory is 2,800 T (VNIIEF in Sarov, Russia, 1998).
Refer to, for details (not spam): http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=823621

Bye :)

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drchuck1

07/02/11 at 3:23 pm

@lucky1997...you forgot the engine powering the turbine you speak of is still at 30% efficiency, it's just burning more fuel to spin the turbine, the electricity you would get would not be worth the fuel savings of the engine not spinning a turbine

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Sapo

07/18/11 at 1:58 pm

Guys, the point here isn't energy creation, it's energy delivered to the target.

These components can be used for railguns most readily, All they need to do is increase the lifetime of the field for the later stages.

Think weapons first. Sadly...

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