According to reports, researchers from LSU, the University of Florida, Fudan University and the Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures in Nanjing, China, carried out a study on materials, which divide into different regions via a process known as electronic phase separation.

Their research leads to information on how these materials could be altered with no need of finding new materials and applying external magnetic fields or changing chemical concentration. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As per the reports, the researchers altered a steel gray mineral, manganite, which is used to make magnetic hard discs in computers. They made holes, also called antidots, in thin films of manganite. It was found that the antidots' edges were magnetic.

LSU Physics Professor Ward Plummer, co-author on the study, said that the finding of the magnetic edge states on the antidots helped carry out the work which was never done before.

As per the researchers, the magnetic phase state at the edges of the antidots increased the metal-to-insulator phase transition temperature of the manganite film. The researchers replicated this via simulations.

According to Jian Shen, head of the Department of Physics at Fudan University and a co-author on the paper, "People have really tried to increase the temperature and reduce the operating field or tried to change the substrate or chemical composition. But we find this new approach with antidots to be quite useful".