Superconductors news and discussions

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weatheriscool
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Superconductors news and discussions

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Researchers develop new tool for analyzing large superconducting circuits
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-tool-larg ... cuits.html
by Northwestern University
The next generation of computing and information processing lies in the intriguing world of quantum mechanics. Quantum computers are expected to be capable of solving large, extremely complex problems that are beyond the capacity of today's most powerful supercomputers.

New research tools are needed to advance the field and fully develop quantum computers. Now Northwestern University researchers have developed and tested a theoretical tool for analyzing large superconducting circuits. These circuits use superconducting quantum bits, or qubits, the smallest units of a quantum computer, to store information.

Circuit size is important since protection from detrimental noise tends to come at the cost of increased circuit complexity. Currently there are few tools that tackle the modeling of large circuits, making the Northwestern method an important contribution to the research community.

"Our framework is inspired by methods originally developed for the study of electrons in crystals and allows us to obtain quantitative predictions for circuits that were previously hard or impossible to access," said Daniel Weiss, corresponding and first author of the paper. He is a fourth-year graduate student in the research group of Jens Koch, an expert in superconducting qubits.
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Towards more energy-efficient 2D semiconductor devices
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-09-ene ... vices.html
by Singapore University of Technology and Design
According to researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), a recently discovered family of two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors could pave the way for high-performance and energy-efficient electronics. Their findings, published in npj 2D Materials and Applications, may lead to the fabrication of semiconductor devices applicable in mainstream electronics and optoelectronics—and even potentially replace silicon-based device technology altogether.

In the quest of miniaturizing electronic devices, one well-known trend is Moore's law, which describes how the number of components in the integrated circuits of computers doubles every two years. This trend is possible thanks to the ever-decreasing size of transistors, some of which are so small that millions of them can be crammed onto a chip the size of a fingernail. But as this trend continues, engineers are starting to grapple with the inherent material limitations of silicon-based device technology.

"Due to the quantum tunneling effect, shrinking a silicon-based transistor too small will lead to highly uncontrollable device behaviors," said SUTD Assistant Professor Ang Yee Sin, who led the study. "People are now looking for new materials beyond the 'silicon era', and 2D semiconductors are a promising candidate."
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Yuli Ban
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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Researchers achieve charge-order-enhanced capacitance in semiconductor moiré superlattices
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-charge-or ... tices.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Phys.org
In recent years, electronics engineers have been experimenting with new materials that could be used to study electronic correlation phenomena. Van der Waals (vdW) moiré materials are particularly promising for examining these phenomena. VdW materials are composed of strongly bonded two-dimensional (2D) layers that are bound in the third dimension through weaker dispersion forces.

The term moiré, on the other hand, refers to a specific pattern produced when an opaque ruled pattern with gaps is placed onto a similar pattern. Studies have recently unveiled robust and correlated insulating states at both integer and fractional filling factors of semiconducting materials with a moiré pattern.

Researchers at Cornell University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan have recently carried out a study exploring the thermodynamic properties of these robust correlated states. Their paper, published in Nature Nanotechnology, ultimately showed that capacitance (i.e., the ability of a system to store electric charge) can play a key role in probing correlated states of semiconductor moiré materials.
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Researchers combine two semiconductor doping methods to achieve new efficiencies
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-combine-s ... ncies.html
by FLEET
A University of Wollongong-led team across three FLEET nodes has combined two traditional semiconductor doping methods to achieve new efficiencies in the topological insulator bismuth-selenide (Bi2Se3).

Two doping elements were used: samarium (Sm) and iron (Fe).

The resulting bismuth-selenide crystals show clear ferromagnetic ordering, a large bulk band gap, high electronic mobility, and the opening of a gap of surface state making this system a good candidate to achieve QAHE at the higher temperatures necessary for viable, sustainable future low-energy electronics.

"The combination of electronic and magnetic properties in topological systems is the keystone of novel topological devices, and one of the core projects in FLEET," says project- leader Prof Xiaolin Wang (UOW). "We have proposed and successfully realized a new way to magnetize a novel electronic material—a topological insulator—by adding two different magnetic ions."
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Breakthrough or bust? Claim of room-temperature superconductivity draws fire
A result last year hailed as a breakthrough in physics also generated skepticism that has now escalated into angry recriminations. Researchers said they had made the first superconductor that works at room temperature, a long-sought goal. But Jorge Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California (UC), San Diego, attacked some of the evidence, particularly a set of magnetic measurements. He says his requests to see the underlying data have been rebuffed by the authors for nearly a year. And, last month in a peer-reviewed paper, he charged that the results are “probably fraudulent.”

Ranga Dias, an applied physicist at the University of Rochester, who with his colleagues made the room-temperature superconductivity claim, rejects Hirsch’s allegations. He asserts that Hirsch isn’t an expert in high-pressure physics and that he has a history of claiming that the Nobel Prize–winning “BCS theory” underlying superconductivity is incorrect. Dias says Hirsch relentlessly badgers superconductivity researchers. “Hirsch is a troll,” Dias says. “We are not going to feed this troll” by providing the data.

Superconductivity is normally seen only at temperatures well below 200 K, or –73°C. But several research groups working with hydrogen-rich compounds called hydrides have claimed that they became superconductors between 200 K and 250 K when squeezed to intense pressures. Dias and his team went further. They reported that by adding a bit of carbon to precursors that make H3S, a known hydride superconductor, they were able to create a carbon sulfur hydride (CSH) material that pushed the superconducting temperature up to 287 K (nearly 15°C), the temperature of a cool room. The result, published in the 14 October 2020 issue of Nature, generated worldwide acclaim.

Some scientists attempted to replicate or extend the finding, without much success. And Hirsch and others raised concerns.
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weatheriscool
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Study shows how superconductivity can be switched on and off in superconductors
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-supercond ... ctors.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Phys.org
Superconductors are materials that can enter a state of no electrical resistance, through which magnetic fields cannot penetrate. Due to their interesting properties, many material scientists and engineers have been exploring the potential of these materials for a wide range of electronics applications.

A key advantage of superconductors is that they can transport electrical signals while preventing their dissipation, which is particularly useful when developing quantum computers. Controlling their states, as is commonly done with semiconductor technology, however, has so far proved to be challenging.

A few years ago, a study suggested the superconductivity of superconducting materials could be switched on and off. Researchers at IBM Research in Zurich have been investigating these results further, in the hope of explaining the switching mechanism unveiled by this previous study. Their findings were recently outlined in a paper published in Nature Electronics.

"Superconductors are, first of all, metals, and metals screen external electric fields very effectively," Andreas Fuhrer and Fabrizio Nichele, two of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. "This fundamental concept, found in all physics textbooks, was put into question by a 2018 publication. In that work, the authors claimed to have turned on and off the superconductivity in a titanium nanowire via moderate electric fields applied by a nearby gate electrode."
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Discovery of the One-way Superconductor That was Thought to be Impossible
April 27, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/950503

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Associate professor Mazhar Ali and his research group at TU Delft have discovered one-way superconductivity without magnetic fields, something that was thought to be impossible ever since its discovery in 1911 – up till now. The discovery, published in Nature, makes use of 2D quantum materials and paves the way towards superconducting computing. Superconductors can make electronics hundreds of times faster, all with zero energy loss. Ali: “If the 20th century was the century of semi-conductors, the 21st can become the century of the superconductor.”

During the 20th century many scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, have puzzled over the nature of superconductivity, which was discovered by Dutch physicist Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911 (read more about this in the frame below). In superconductors, a current goes through a wire without any resistance, which means inhibiting this current or even blocking it is hardly possible – let alone getting the current to flow only one way and not the other. That Ali’s group managed to make superconducting one-directional – necessary for computing – is remarkable: one can compare it to inventing a special type of ice which gives you zero friction when skating one way, but insurmountable friction the other way.

Superconductor: super-fast, super-green

The advantages of applying superconductors to electronics are twofold. Superconductors can make electronics hundreds of times faster, and implementing superconductors into our daily lives would make IT much greener: if you were to spin a superconducting wire from here to the moon, it would transport the energy without any loss. For instance, the use of superconductors instead of regular semi-conductors might safe up to 10% of all western energy reserves according to NWO.

The (im)possibility of applying superconducting

In the 20th century and beyond, no one could tackle the barrier of making superconducting electrons go in just one-direction, which is a fundamental property needed for computing and other modern electronics (consider for example diodes that go one way as well). In normal conduction the electrons fly around as separate particles; in superconductors they move in pairs of twos, without any loss of electrical energy
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This pretty much guarantees we'll at least have zettascale computing.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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Yuli Ban
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caltrek wrote: Wed Apr 27, 2022 3:49 pm Discovery of the One-way Superconductor That was Thought to be Impossible
Q: Is it realistic for ordinary computers (or even the supercomputers of KNMI and IBM) to make use of superconducting?

Yes, it is! Not for people at home, but for server farms or for supercomputers, it would be smart to implement this. Centralized computation is really how the world works now-a-days. Any and all intensive computation is done at centralized facilities where localization adds huge benefits in terms of power management, heat management, etc. The existing infrastructure could be adapted without too much cost to work with Josephson diode based electronics. There is a very real chance, if the challenges discussed in the other question are overcome, that this will revolutionize centralized and supercomputing.
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