High temperature magnetic sensors created

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CHICAGO, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say slightly degrading a semiconductor material called indium antimonide can make magnetic sensors capable of operating at high temperatures.

University of Chicago physics Professor Thomas Rosenbaum and postdoctoral fellow Jingshi Hu, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said such a feature will make magnetic sensors capable of operating at the high temperatures ceramic engines of automobiles and aircraft of the future will require.

Most magnetic sensors operate by detecting how a magnetic field alters the path of an electron. But conventional sensors lose that 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. Energy Department.

"This sensor would be able to function in those sorts of temperatures without any degradation," Rosenbaum said.

The research is reported in the journal Nature Materials.