  Using first principle calculations we showed that the Curie temperature of
manganites thin films can be increased by far more than an order of magnitude
by applying appropriate strains. Our main breakthrough is that the control of
the orbital ordering responsible for the spectacular $T_C$ increase cannot be
imposed by the substrate only. Indeed, the strains, first applied by the
substrate, need to be maintained over the growth direction by the alternation
of the manganite layers with another appropriate material. Following these
theoretical findings, we synthesized such super-lattices and verified our
theoretical predictions.
