Successful magnetic facility test puts China in elite scientific club

China’s Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) on Wednesday passed testing by an expert panel organized by the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC).

The facility ranks second worldwide in terms of quantity and intensity.

The project, approved by NDRC in 2008, was jointly built by Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASHIPS) and the University of Science and Technology of China.

As one of only two 40-Tesla hybrid magnet groups the world over, SHMFF has the potential to reach an even higher level of 45 Tesla in the future, according to Hans Schneider Muntau, a world-renowned high field magnet scientist.

By creating a magnetic field as high as 40 Tesla, the SHMFF will become an experimental environment for fields such as high temperature superconductivity, quantum materials and life science.

Since 1913, 19 accomplishments closely linked to high magnetic fields have won Nobel Prizes. Winners include British physicist Andre Geim, who won the prize in 2010 for his groundbreaking research into graphene, the thinnest and most conductive material in the world.

Wang Yingjian, Party chief of CASHIPS, said that SHMFF has been used as an experimental environment by more than 100 universities and research institutions, including Tsinghua University, since trial operations began in 2010.

China is the fifth country to have a high magnetic field facility, following the US, France, the Netherlands and Japan.