Systems such as magnetic data storage devices and MRI body scan machines rely on magnets made from solid materials. Now, using a modified 3D printer, scientists have made magnetic devices from liquids.

Researchers have created 3D-printed flexible mesh structures that can be controlled with applied magnetic fields while floating on water. The structures can grab small objects and carry water droplets, giving them the potential to be useful as soft robots that mimic creatures living on water surfaces or that can serve as tissue scaffolds for cell cultures.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses magnetic fields and radio waves to create images of organs and tissues in the human body, helping doctors diagnose potential problems or diseases. Doctors use MRI to identify abnormalities or diseases in vital organs as well as many other types of body tissue, including the spinal cord and joints.

The Hall effect was named after its discoverer, American physicist and thermoelectric researcher Harvard Edwin Herbert Hall. The Hall sensor acts as a magnetic field perpendicular to a current-carrying conductor, creating an electrical voltage across the current flow direction. There are many possible applications of this physical principle allowing the strength of an external magnetic field to be determined and measured. Current measurements are possible as each conductor through which current flows creates its own a magnetic field, which can be used to indirectly measure the current. Since the Hall effect is most pronounced in semiconductors, typically a small plate of semiconductor material is used as the Hall element.