Satoshi Wada, 1st-term Student in the Frontier Materials Chemistry Lab. of the Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Hokkaido University, is the first individual to discover that the magneto-optical property known as the Faraday effect is affected by the chirality of rare earth clusters. He discovered that the Faraday effect in two clusters composed of 9 Tb (III) in a mirror isometric relationship with ligands in chiral positioning depending on varying chirality values. As the lead author, Mr. Wada published his findings in NPG Asia Materials (a sister publication to Nature). The new findings achieved in this research can be expected to establish new design criteria in materials for the expression of the Faraday effect and open up new frontiers for a field that combines magnetism and chirality.

Note: Chirality: A quality whereby shapes and bodies are asymmetric in such a way that the structure and its mirror image are not superimposable