When researchers at UT Austin coaxed an atomically thin sheet of nickel phosphorus trisulfide to enter a special magnetic phase, called the BKT phase, the magnetic orientations of individual atoms formed swirling patterns called vortices. Credit: Ella Maru Studios Materials can behave in surprising ways when they are thinned down layer by layer until they are only a single atom thick. In a new study published in Nature Materials , physicists led by researchers at The University of Texas at