Superconductors news and discussions

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Viable superconducting material created at low temperature and low pressure
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-viable-su ... ssure.html
by University of Rochester
In a historic achievement, University of Rochester researchers have created a superconducting material at both a temperature and pressure low enough for practical applications.

"With this material, the dawn of ambient superconductivity and applied technologies has arrived," according to a team led by Ranga Dias, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and physics. In a paper in Nature, the researchers describe a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride (NDLH) that exhibits superconductivity at 69 degrees Fahrenheit (20.5 degrees Celsius) and 10 kilobars (145,000 pounds per square inch, or psi) of pressure.
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Physicists Claim Creation of a Superconductor at Near-Ambient Conditions
Source: Science Alert
Few discoveries in science would revolutionize technology as much as a material that achieves superconductivity at room temperature, under relatively mild pressures.

A team of physicists led by Ranga Dias, a physicist from the University of Rochester in New York now claims they might have cracked it, demonstrating a rare earth metal called lutetium combined with hydrogen and nitrogen can conduct electricity without resistance at 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) and around just 10,000 atmospheres of pressure, the team reports.

If confirmed by other researchers, this would be a huge breakthrough in creating devices that don't waste energy on heat when producing a current.

Ideally this could one day be used to create more efficient computers; faster, frictionless maglev trains; superior X-ray technology; and even more powerful nuclear fusion reactors.

Read more: https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists ... conditions
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A novel ultramicro supercapacitor with ultrahigh charge storage capability
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-03-ult ... ility.html
by Pratibha Gopalakrishna, Indian Institute of Science

Researchers at the Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics (IAP), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have designed a novel ultramicro supercapacitor, a tiny device capable of storing an enormous amount of electric charge. It is also much smaller and more compact than existing supercapacitors and can potentially be used in many devices ranging from streetlights to consumer electronics, electric cars and medical devices.

Most of these devices are currently powered by batteries. However, over time, these batteries lose their ability to store charge and therefore have a limited shelf-life. Capacitors, on the other hand, can store electric charge for much longer, by virtue of their design. For example, a capacitor operating at 5 volts will continue to operate at the same voltage even after a decade. But unlike batteries, they cannot discharge energy constantly—to power a mobile phone, for example.

Supercapacitors, on the other hand, combine the best of both batteries and capacitors—they can store as well as release large amounts of energy, and are therefore highly sought-after for next-generation electronic devices.

In the current study, published in ACS Energy Letters, the researchers fabricated their supercapacitor using Field Effect Transistors or FETs as the charge collectors, instead of the metallic electrodes that are used in existing capacitors. "Using FET as an electrode for supercapacitors is something new for tuning charge in a capacitor," says Abha Misra, Professor at IAP and corresponding author of the study.
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New kind of quantum transport discovered in a device combining high-temperature superconductors and graphene
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-kind-quan ... ature.html
by Aalto University
Developing new quantum devices relies on controlling how electrons behave. A material called graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms, has fascinated researchers in recent years because its electrons behave as if they have no mass. For decades, scientists have also been interested in high-temperature superconductors: ceramic materials where electron interactions yield a macroscopic quantum state where electrons pair with each other. They do so at a temperature above the usual superconducting temperature of metals, which approaches absolute zero.

In a recent study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Stony Brook University and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US, along with Aalto University in Finland, demonstrated a new electronic device that employs the unique ways in which electrons behave in these two materials—graphene and high-temperature superconductors.
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Using superconductors to move people, cargo and energy through one combined system
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-supercond ... bined.html
by Jeannie Kever, University of Houston
The promise of superconductivity for electrical power transmission and transportation has long been held back by high costs. Now researchers from the University of Houston and Germany have demonstrated a way to cut the cost and upend both the transit and energy transport sectors by using superconductors to move people, cargo and energy along existing highway infrastructure.

The combined system would not only lower the cost of operating each system but would also provide a way to store and transport liquified hydrogen, an important future source of clean energy. The liquified hydrogen would be used to cool the superconductor guideway as it is stored and transported, reducing the need for a separate specialized pipeline system capable of cooling the fuel to 20 degrees Kelvin, or minus 424 Fahrenheit.

The concept, described in a paper published on April 24, 2023 in the journal APL Energy, suggests a future in which air travel and traditional freight transport could become obsolete, replaced by a "super system" allowing personal and commercial vehicles to travel at speeds up to 400 miles an hour—maybe even twice that fast.

"I call it a world-changing technology," said Zhifeng Ren, director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH, who came up with the concept and is a corresponding author on the paper. "Superconductivity has had such promise to transmit electric power without power loss, to power magnetically levitating, super-fast trains and for energy storage. But it has not been economically viable, which is why it hasn't happened at large scale yet."
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China completes superconducting test run for 1,000km/h ultra high-speed maglev train
Edmond Ng

China has completed a superconducting test run for its ultra high-speed train that aims for speeds of up to 1,000km/h (621mph) in a low-vacuum tube. If successful, it will become the fastest means of on-ground transport. The “T-Flight” will someday carry passengers and cargo between mega cities in China. The team had previously tested at speeds of 623km/h (387mph), under non-vacuum conditions.

https://www.scmp.com/video/china/321817 ... pe=section
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New material facilitates search for room-temperature superconductivity
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-material- ... ivity.html
by Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology
Scientists from Jilin University, the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, and Skoltech have synthesized lanthanum-cerium polyhydride, a material that promises to facilitate studies of near-room-temperature superconductivity. It offers a compromise between the polyhydrides of lanthanum and cerium in terms of how much cooling and pressure it requires. This enables easier experiments, which might one day lead scientists to compounds that conduct electricity with zero resistance at ambient conditions—an engineering dream many years in the making. The study was published in Nature Communications.

One of the most intriguing unsolved questions in modern physics is: Can we make a material that conducts electricity with zero resistance (superconducts) at room temperature and atmospheric pressure? Such a superconductor would enable power grids with unprecedented efficiency, ultrafast microchips, and electromagnets so powerful they could levitate trains or control fusion reactors.
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Scientists Stretch Metal to Discovery Superconductivity Switch
The researchers believe they've found a new way to drive materials toward a superconductive state.
By Ryan Whitwam June 22, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/science/sci ... ity-switch
A magnet is suspended over a liquid nitrogen cooled high-temperature superconductor

Superconducting materials are essential in cutting-edge technology like MRI machines and particle accelerators, but these materials are expensive and finicky, making many of the proposed applications, like magnetic levitation, impossible for now. That could be changing thanks to a team at MIT that reports discovering the mechanism that causes some materials to become superconductors.

Superconductors are aptly named—they conduct electrons super-well because they have no electrical resistance. Most superconductors only work under very specific conditions, like extremely low temperatures. Room-temperature superconductors exist, but they're rare and usually come with drawbacks of their own.

The research, led by MIT physicist Riccardo Comin, seeks to understand how materials shift from having electrical resistance to being superconductors. It's almost like flipping a switch; one minute you have a typical chunk of metal, and then resistance drops to zero, and electrons can flow freely. It's not magic, but the science behind this "nematic transition" is deviously complex.
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Superconductivity Breakthrough: First Direct Visualization of a Zero-Field Pair Density Wave
https://scitechdaily.com/superconductiv ... _article=1

By Brookhaven National Laboratory July 4, 2023
Superconducting Material Eu-1144
In this illustration of the superconducting material Eu-1144, the blue and magenta wave shown above the crystal lattice represents how the energy level of the electron pairs (yellow spheres) spatially modulates as these electrons move through the crystal. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Tunneling spectroscopy uncovers the clearest proof yet that this exotic superconducting state of matter exists without a magnetic field in an iron-based superconductor.

Researchers discovered an alternate superconducting state, called a pair density wave (PDW), in a non-magnetic environment, challenging previous understandings of superconductivity. This breakthrough in an iron-based superconductor that also exhibits ferromagnetism opens up new potential for superconductivity research and could revolutionize the field.

In the field of superconductivity—the phenomenon in which electrons can flow through a material with essentially zero resistance—the “holy grail” of discovery is a superconductor that can perform under everyday temperatures and pressures. Such a material could revolutionize modern life. But currently, even the “high-temperature” (high-Tc) superconductors that have been discovered must be kept very cold to function—too cold for most applications.
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Yuli Ban
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The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor
The LK-99 is a very useful material for the study of superconductivity puzzles at room temperature. All evidence and explanation lead that LK-99 is the first room-temperature and ambient-pressure superconductor. The LK-99 has many possibilities for various applications such as magnet, motor, cable, levitation train, power cable, qubit for a quantum computer, THz Antennas, etc
Also, one of the best sentences I have ever read in a scientific paper:
We believe that our new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind.
Video: https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n






https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624
Guys, even if everything in this paper is true, the material as it is might have limited applications.
From what they show, the critical field and critical current seem very low. 2500 Oe is like 0.25 Tesla. Even REBCO at 77K is >1T. And 2500 Oe is not even at critical temperature but much lower. From skimming through the article I couldn't find the sample size of the current measurement to get the critical current density, not just current which is meaningless (and around 300 mA).

This means you can't actually push big current through this thing (yet). You can't make a powerful magnet, and you can't make viable power lines, both applications that were the hallmark of "room temperature superconductor revolution".

Of course, maybe one or a few more tweak(s) of the material and boom, it will give high J_c and B_c. I really hope it does, it would be super cool!
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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