Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines of taking tech items and putting a magical spin on them that allows them to do magical things similar to their base use, ie. the spirit radio/baby monitor.
Some ideas off the top of my head:
Lightning rod that absorbs and redirects ambient electricty
Metal detector that creates magnetic or seismic waves
Flashlight that actually blinds people or works to counter invisibility or reveals spirits
In a way, it would be some hybrid of sponsored magic/faith. There are lots of mention that a wizards faith in his magic is key. Suppose you had someone akin to the people in the new "Sorcerer's Apprentice" who believe that magic is really an extension of physics, that by using more of their brain they can manipulate the world around them. They create fire by causing molecules to accelerate, so on and so forth.
That's not really a hybrid of anything, that's just normal old thaumaturgy. Using something in a spell because of the idea it represents in the wizard's mind isn't about faith, unless they believe it is, it's just a mental post-it so the wizard doesn't have to keep everything visualized in their mind.
And yeah, I could see some of the more modernly educated wizards believing they understand chemistry and physics enough to base their magic on them rather than the traditional elements of their region. They're probably wrong but believing you understand something is more important than actually understanding it in magic. Harry himself says it's all about moving energy around and that's basically all physics and chemistry are.
You'd probably have to spend some time thinking on it and hashing it out with your GM though. Budding M theorists might want to use one all-inclusive element, for instance, but that would render them quite screwed on refinement tiering.