From the 18-25th February 2018, Cohort 3 student Liam Farrar was working with Dr Amalia Coldea, and her student Matthew Bristow at the Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford.

They are part of the Centre for Applied Superconductivity (CFAS). Liam couldn’t give us too much information about what exactly they were doing, but the basis was doing electronic transport measurements on the superconductor Iron Selenium (FeSe) using the groups ‘Physical Properties Measurement System’ (PPMS, attached image), which can produce magnetic fields up to 16 Tesla and can be cooled down to 2 Kelvin.

To the right is an image of the type of device that they were measuring, which is typically < 100 atoms thick, with a width of smaller than a human hair (quite small compared to the large system used to measure it!)

This is where Liam was lucky enough to stay for the week in Oxford, Sommerville College.