Results come from a lab that had an earlier superconductivity paper retracted:
On Wednesday, a paper was released by Nature that describes a mixture of elements that can superconduct at room temperature. The work follows a general trend of finding new ways of stuffing hydrogen into a mixture of other atoms by using extreme pressure. This trend produced a variety of high-temperature superconductors in previous research, though characterizing them was difficult because of the pressures involved. This new chemical, however, superconducts at much lower pressures than previous versions, which should make it easier for others to replicate the work.
The lab that produced the chemical, however, had one of its earlier papers on high-temperature superconductivity retracted due to a lack of details regarding one of its key measurements. So, it's a fair bet that many other researchers will try to replicate it.
The form of superconductivity involved here requires that electrons partner up with each other, forming what are called Cooper pairs. One of the things that encourages Cooper pair formation is a high-frequency vibration (called a phonon) among the atomic nuclei that these electrons are associated with. That's easier to arrange with light nuclei, and hydrogen is the lightest around. So finding ways to stuff more hydrogen into a chemical is thought to be a viable route toward producing higher-temperature superconductors.
The surest way of doing that, however, involves extreme pressures. These pressures can induce hydrogen to enter the crystal structure of metals or to form hydrogen-rich chemicals that are unstable at lower pressures. Both of these approaches have resulted in chemicals with very high critical temperatures, the highest point at which they'll support superconductivity. While these have approached room temperature, however, the pressures required were multiple Gigapascals—with each Gigapascal being nearly 10,000 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level.
In essence, this involves trading off impractical temperatures for impractical pressures.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12, @12:19AM (8 children)
not only that, but impractical currents for anything useful
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12, @02:57AM (5 children)
s
You're absolutely correct. Nobody should ever attempt any experiments or try to learn anything unless they are directly in the process toward a 100% useful and practical end. Any and all interim learning is rubbish.
/s
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12, @05:36AM
maybe they can use this superconductor in a 10x better battery involving fusion power and fly us to mars yaaaaaaay
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 12, @07:28AM (3 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12, @07:20PM
Jesus, what backward school did you guys go to??? We are meant to sit on our asses and demand High Standards and More Effort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14, @12:50AM (1 child)
Whoosh!!
Did you totally miss the "s" and "/s"??
Re-read.
Unless I'm misreading or misunderstanding top parent's post, it seems to complain about wasting time and effort on useless results. If that is his/her/it's complaint, that complaint is idiotic at best, and the person is stunningly unrealistic at best.
My point is: development is an iterative process, by definition. Look up what Edison said about his process of getting a good incandescent lamp to work.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 14, @01:30AM
Nope. Now think about my reply in that context.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Sunday March 12, @03:04PM
Extreme pressure is a lot cheaper and easier to maintain than cold though. Maintaining super cold needs thick insulation and substantial active cooling, there's just no other option. There's lots of tricks to passively maintain extreme static pressures though.
As one of the simpler examples, you could heat a steel pipe to expand it enough to just barely fit a shrunken super-chilled superconductor rod inside, and as the two return to ambient temperatures and their normal sizes, the pressure on the rod will go through the roof and stay there. No active systems required.
10,000 atm is probably a stretch (Google offered me no examples of typical shrink-fit pressures), but it's moving in the right direction. Industry standard steel pipe is available to handle pressures pushing 1,400atm, and there's probably much better materials than steel to make an extreme pressure shrink-fit sheathing out of. Even if you need a 1m wide pipe to exert sufficient pressure on a 1cm rod, that'd still be dirt cheap compared to keeping that rod cooled to even slightly cryogenic temperatures.
And if there's overlap between the two strategies...? We might not be too far from superconductors that require a combination of affordably achievable pressure and temperature to do their thing, and open up a vast range of new applications.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday March 13, @06:03AM
Is it this week's diamond-anvil paper where they claim to have set a new record temperature/pressure combination?
[Pauses to read]
Yup, it is.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Swervin on Sunday March 12, @04:58AM (1 child)
One thing I've wondered, if it would be possible to encapsulate something like this in carbon nanotubes to reach the required pressure. This article says you can contain 40 gigapascals in carbon nanotubes, and they can be expanded and contracted using electricity: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1124594 [science.org]
So, maybe you could get this material inside the nanotubes and have filaments of this room temperature superconductor contained at the required pressure.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Sunday March 12, @08:02AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Sunday March 12, @02:26PM
Otherwise known as 'Wheeee-tons'.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---