(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Chicago scientists have
discovered how to make magnetic sensors capable of operating at
the high temperatures that ceramic engines in cars and aircraft
of the future will require for higher operating efficiency than
today's internal combustion technology. The key to fabricating
the sensors involves slightly diluting samples of a well-known
semiconductor material, called indium antimonide, which is
valued for its purity. Chicago's Thomas Rosenbaum and associate
Jingshi Hu, now of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
have published their formula in the September issue of the
journal Nature Materials. Most magnetic sensors operate by
detecting how a magnetic field alters the path of an electron.
Conventional sensors lose this capability when subjected to
temperatures reaching hundreds of degrees. Not so in the indium
antimonide magnetosensors that Rosenbaum and Hu developed with
support from the U.S. Department of Energy. "This sensor would
be able to function in those sorts