Question: what new material are you looking at now and what does it do

Kerry O'Shea answered on 13 Nov 2014:

I’m looking at an alloy of lanthanum, strontium, magnanese and oxygen (or LSMO for short!). It has very useful properties because it is a permanent magnet up to about 100 degrees Celsius, which is important for memory applications because you don’t want your files to be erased if you go to a hot country!
Another property is that it’s electrical resistance changes when a magnetic field is applied to it, which is really useful for making sensors.
You probably know that some materials are electrically conductive, whilst others are insulating. Well, LSMO is called a half metal, which is another interesting feature that can be used in device applications. There are still a lot of things we don’t know about the LSMO, for example, when you put it next to some other materials, it’s properties can drastically change. So lots of work still needs to be done!