CIFAR news recently reverberated across the Pacific: Several Japanese newspapers reported on Quantum Materials program member Takashi Imai’s work on a new and exciting class of superconducting materials made of iron.

Dr. Imai is an expert on the electronic properties of high-temperature superconductors – materials that have a remarkable ability to conduct electricity without resistance. These materials are used in MRI machines, ultrathin power lines and high-speed levitating trains. The barrier to more ubiquitous and cost-efficient use of high-temperature superconductors, (despite their name), is that they still need to be very cold to function – more than 100 degrees below zero. The Holy Grail of this research field is to create materials that superconduct at room temperature.

For the last two decades, most efforts towards this goal have focused on copper-based superconducing materials. But in early 2008, researchers in Tokyo found superconducting behaviour in iron-based materials as well. This news came as a very pleasant surprise – iron is one of the world’s most abundant metals and it was previously thought to form only magnets, not superconductors. The race to better understand the underlying physics of this mysterious new class of materials began.

Dr. Imai is one of several CIFAR researchers engaged in this race. His recent work created a better understanding of how electrons orient themselves in iron-based materials, and how that orientation affects superconductivity.

“Besides providing a scientific clue about the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity, this finding may also serve as a guide to designing new superconductors,” says Dr. Imai.