Mightier magnet will increase FSU's research capacities
Materials, medicines and building construction will benefit from MagLab research
Each year, an estimated 1,500 scientists from around the world visit Tallahassee to conduct research at the MagLab at Florida State University.
And while most of the research is tedious, exacting and often complicated, the end result will have a direct impact on future health treatments, what materials are purchased and even what medicines are prescribed.
FSU's MagLab creates world's strongest magnet
Senior writer Byron Dobson asked Tim Cross, a biochemistry professor at FSU, to discuss some practical applications as a result of this week’s tesla record.
Q. Why is this an important development to our everyday lives?
A: This very high field magnet, that has been designed to generate a stable and homogenous magnetic field, will be used to provide enhanced pharmaceuticals, to enhance chemical catalysts for producing plastics and many other materials used in our daily lives.
The processes for making specialized cements used in high-pressure oil wells or in the construction of skyscrapers will be studied and enhanced. How viruses function during infections and how drug resistance is achieved will be studied leading to new ways to defeat viral infections and drug resistance.
This magnet will allow us for the first time to explore the chemistry of oxygen and sulfur atoms by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance or NMR - this is the parent technology for our MRI imaging that is used in our hospitals.
In a sense what we do is to record an image of molecules, but it goes beyond that to understand how molecules function, how they achieve the properties they have, such as our pharmaceuticals.
For decades we have been using NMR technology in chemistry and biochemistry laboratories, such as those in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at FSU and in the MagLab’s NMR and MRI User Program that attracts researchers from all over the world to our facilities. Until now most of those studies have focused on carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen atoms in molecules, materials and proteins, but much of the important chemistry that these molecules, materials and proteins carries out involves atoms that have been difficult to study by commercial instrumentation. This new high field magnet and the instrumentation we have assembled for research using this magnet will allow us to routinely study the oxygens, the sulfur, the magnesium atoms and many more for the first time.
Q: Why is this significant for the Mag Lab and for Florida State University’s quest to become a Top 25 public university?
A: The federal grants used to design, engineer and construct this magnet are grants to Florida State University and some of the resources to perform scientific research in this magnet are also grants to FSU that have and will help move FSU toward a top 25 university.
Users for this magnet will be drawn from all over the world to use this new 36T magnet and the unique capabilities we are developing and implementing on this magnet so that this magnet stays at the scientific forefront for more than a decade.
Q: Can you put in simple terms what a hybrid magnet is and what research it will enhance?
A: This hybrid magnet is a combination of two different magnet technologies; one is a superconducting magnet technology and the other is a resistive magnet technology. The superconducting wires at very low temperature conduct electricity without resistance and provide a 14 Tesla background field with a bore diameter not dissimilar to that of an MRI instrument except at much stronger magnetic fields than those used in hospitals or in research facilities such as those in our medical community and at FSU that operate at 3 Tesla. The inner ‘coils’ of the magnet are resistive, meaning that as the power goes through them generating an additional 22 Tesla they generate resistance and need to be cooled by vast quantities of chilled and deionized water rushing through the magnet.
Q: How much of the design and construction work was done here in Innovation Park?
A: I believe the first discussions about this magnet began in 2001. The design and engineering was almost exclusively done in Innovation Park - some components such as the superconducting wire and the materials for the resistive portion of the magnet were purchased from outside of the MagLab, but the assembly, installation, and integration to the DC Power Supplies were done by folks at the Magnet Lab.
Contact senior writer Byron Dobson at email@example.com