Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 February 2011
New opportunities for research on magnetic materials are emerging as a result of quiet revolutions in several areas including: materials synthesis techniques, surface characterization capabilities, new magnetic sensitive detectors and spectroscopic techniques, improved synchrotron radiation instrumentation, and predictive modeling based on first principals calculations. This paper describes some of the more recent advances and assesses some of the new opportunities that are emerging in the field of magnetic materials research.