Berkeley Lab researchers Xiao-Dong Xiang and Peter Schultz published their findings in the Oct. 13 issue of the journal Science . Schultz is also a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley. Xiang and Schultz first described their combinatorial technique only four months earlier, in the June 23 issue of Science .
Magnetoresistant materials are just the first.
Combinatorial synthesis enables materials scientists to create thousands of complex materials in the time it normally takes to create one. The technique lays down the materials in a checkerboard arrangement, as thin squares arranged in a grid. Because of the different cut-outs used for each ingredient, each square in the grid receives a different combination of metals. The materials can be scanned for interesting electrical properties with a matching set of contact pins. The MR compounds in the study are members of a materials class known as perovskite oxides, conductive metal crystals that are made of complex ratios of four to six metal atoms.