What about Samarium ?

EzekielEzekiel
edited February 2015 in Magnets
Hi everybody ! Its been tasty to read you all :)
Having grown up in cyberpunk culture, I'm very curious about this 6th sense quest (and beyond!)

About Samarium : I have a friend working in electronic lab (not transhumanian himself, more on the hack side of life) asked him about the risk of contact between magnet and body if the envelop breaks up in time.

He told me it could damage your tissues, due to oxydation
Also told me about those magnets they use on new ssd disk (not sure I got the technical part right, I'm more on the dark side of the moon myself ^^) made of Samarium

Question is :

The guy told me it was safer because NO oxydation, NO reaction, but he's no biologist so... Any guess?
tHX!
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Comments

  • SaumanahaiiSaumanahaii
    edited August 2012
    Hm, interesting point. Wikipedia has a nice table comparing them.  Looks like neodymium has a slightly stronger field and resistance to getting demagnetized, but if samarium is bioinert, that could be a great option.
  • rdbrdb
    edited August 2012
    Samarium-cobalt magnets are very brittle.  Bioinert or not, you don't want to have tiny sharp bits chip off when subject to even a minor amount of stress.
    So even they would need some sort of polymer coating to prevent chips from breaking off.  With the right coating (like a thick PTFE coat as opposed to a 30-micron parylene layer), it can become almost impossible for the coating to be breached, so if you do the coating right, you can really put any magnet in there.

    They do have excellent temperature characteristics, but if your core temperature goes into the cryogenic or boiling hot ranges you've got way bigger problems to worry about than just your magnet demagnetising.
  • EzekielEzekiel
    Just out of curiosity, what could little bits of magnets cause when spread into your body ?

    Couldn't they just stay in the hands, or in the muscles, allowing a very diffuse sense ??? (as opposed to the concept of a single-point sensor organ)

    Or would you soon die in unbearable pain ?
  • UnqualifiedUnqualified
    The important part of the phrase "tiny sharp bits," in the context of an implant, is the word sharp. O hai, internal bleeding.
    Magnet strength scales with size; too small a magnet won't pick up anything, and is therefore useless as a sensor. There've already been arguments on the board about where to draw that line...
  • ThomasEgiThomasEgi
    what they could cause: havoc

    brittle material tends to break off in pieces with very sharp edges, so they could pierce or cut through anything. if they go into the bloodstream they could clog tiny bloodvessels (you don't want that to happen in your brain). just to name a few worst case scenario that pop up in my mind
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