The paper “Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and lane formation in ferromagnetic ferrofluids” was recently published in the journal Small authored by the researchers from the Department of Complex Matter Mojca Vilfan, Borut Lampret, Žiga Gregorin, Luka Cmok, Patricija Hribar Boštjančič and Alenka Mertelj, in collaboration with Darja Lisjak from the Department of Synthesis of Materials, Andrej Vilfan from the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and co-workers from abroad. Ferromagnetic ferrofluids are suspensions of magnetic nanoplatelets in fluids, which at sufficiently high concentrations exhibit a ferromagnetic phase. Exposed to an oscillating magnetic field, under certain conditions, a striped structure is observed under polarising microscope, which was explained as formation of magnetic domains. Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking leads to nanoparticle rotation and consequently to the generation of fluid flow which, despite the uniformity of the external field, flows in opposite directions in neighbouring stripes.
You can read the publication here:: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smll.202304387