How small can a particle of iron be and still be magnetic?

Question

Any piece of iron that you can hold in your hand will be attracted to a magnet. I suspect a single atom would not. So is there a lower limit to the size of a particle of iron that would still react to a magnetic field?

sleepy · Answer

Very good question. These small pieces of materials are called clusters (containing maybe 10-100 atoms) and people do serious research to find how magnetic moments of these clusters change with the cluster size. For example, you might look for articles containing words "clusters" and "magnetism" in their titles.

Answered by sleepy on April 24, 2021

How small can a particle of iron be and still be magnetic?

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