January 7, 2014

RAMBO a small but powerful magnet


Rice University system allows high-magnetic-field experiments on a tabletop

Rice University scientists have pioneered a tabletop magnetic pulse generator that does the work of a room-sized machine – and more.

The device dubbed “RAMBO” – short for Rice Advanced Magnet with Broadband Optics – will allow researchers who visit the university to run spectroscopy-based experiments on materials in pulsed magnetic fields of up to 30 tesla. (A high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging system is about 10 tesla in strength.)

The Rice lab of physicist Junichiro Kono created RAMBO in collaboration with Hiroyuki Nojiri at the Institute for Materials Research at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. Details appeared online recently in the American Institute of Physics journal Review of Scientific Instruments.