Our collaborative paper with the Jalan group at the University of Minnesota is out today in Nature Nanotechnology! In this work, the Jalan group grew IrO2 films by solid-source metal-organic MBE and unexpectedly found that substrate-induced strain produced precipitates on the film surface. Careful characterization showed that these precipitates are Ir metal rather than oxide. Through collaborations with Prof. Wencan Jin and Dr. Jerzy Sadowski at Brookhaven National Lab, we performed spatially-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM) to show that the islands were metallic. This very exciting result helps to explain the complex role that strain can play in oxidation states of films. It was supported by our AFOSR and DOE BES grants. We are also pursuing growth of iridates here at Auburn as part of our DOE and NSF CAREER projects, so this is the first of many papers on these exciting materials to come!