Room temperature superconductor

[HAL9000]

If a room-temperature superconductor could be used at atmospheric pressure, it could save vast amounts of energy lost to resistance in the electrical grid. And it could improve current technologies, from MRI machines to quantum computers to magnetically levitated trains. Dias envisions that humanity could become a “superconducting society.”


But so far scientists have created only tiny specks of the material at high pressure, so practical applications are still a long way off.

The first room-temperature superconductor has finally been found

A compound of carbon, hydrogen and sulfur conducts electricity without resistance up to 15° C, but there’s a catch: It works only under high pressure.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[HAL9000]

similar info, but in video form

 

[Saul Goodman]

I love these things but it always transpires that it'll cost 600 million quid to make enough to save 4 quid a year.

 

[HAL9000]

I love these things but it always transpires that it'll cost 600 million quid to make enough to save 4 quid a year.

Super conducting cables are already being used to transport electricity, but its hampered due to the need to cool with liquid nitrogen. If you can get rid of the cooling requirement then using superconductors to link countries electricity systems become practical.

Not sure about this article, quick scan it says..

" the electromagnetic radiation emitted by overhead lines plays practically no role when it comes to superconductors"

don't know why electromagnetic radiation is relevent

Cold, colder, superconductor | en:former

Narrower lines, more capacity, less energy losses – this is what the developers of superconductors promise. The German energy group RWE and the French cable manufacturer Nexans are among the pioneers of this technology, which has already proven to be successful when put into practise in Essen...

www.en-former.com

Another application is power storage.. (might be short term, could be useful)

Superconducting magnetic energy storage - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[WouldBe]

Close but no cigar as room temp is usually 21C and scientifically it's 25C

 

[HAL9000]

Close but no cigar as room temp is usually 21C and scientifically it's 25C

True but, 15 C can be achieved using refrigeration. Current super conductors use either liquid helium or liquid nitrogen (mri machines and small scale electricity transmission). If they can get this thing to work at normal pressures, its going to be a big leap forward.

 

[WouldBe]

true but 15 C, can be achieved using refrigeration. Current super conductors use either liquid helium or liquid nitrogen (mri machines and small scale electricity transmission). If they can get this thing to work at normal pressures, its going to be a big leap forward.

Yes it will be a big leap forward and I believe it will be done but trying to refrigerate power lines is more than a little awkward (particularly considering global warming) and would more than likely use more power than would be saved. Likewise trying to refrigerate train lines for maglev.

 

[Pickman's model]

True but, 15 C can be achieved using refrigeration. Current super conductors use either liquid helium or liquid nitrogen (mri machines and small scale electricity transmission). If they can get this thing to work at normal pressures, its going to be a big leap forward.

We all know what happened with the original big leap forwards

 

[DotCommunist]

Race is on for room temperature superconductor

Researchers in Korea have published a paper that they say shows the first superconductor that operates at room temperature and pressure.

www.eenewseurope.com

Apparently a south korean team recon they have the grail.

 

[Crispy]

Race is on for room temperature superconductor

Researchers in Korea have published a paper that they say shows the first superconductor that operates at room temperature and pressure.

www.eenewseurope.com

Apparently a south korean team recon they have the grail.

My eyebrows have embedded themselves in the ceiling.

reads story

Stable up to 126°C

My eyebrows are now interfering with air traffic.

Off to read the paper....

 

[DotCommunist]

My eyebrows have embedded themselves in the ceiling.

reads story

Stable up to 126°C

My eyebrows are now interfering with air traffic.

Off to read the paper....

I was hoping someone who is good at science would check to see if this is legit and tell me so ta

 

[Crispy]

Ok, so best I can understand their hypothesis:

The mechanism behind superconductivity is poorly understood.
Low temperatures and high pressures seem to be required.
They propose that stress on the inter-molecular structure of materials is responsible, caused by the slight change in volume of a material when cooled or compressed.
So, rather than cooling or compressing the material, they introduce impurities which distort the polycrystaline structure in a similar way.

I can't speak to the method or results but it's a coherent argument.
It's made of Lead, Copper, Phosophorous and Oxygen, so no rare materials required.

They say they've demonstrated the Meisner effect with it, which would be the clearest proof that it works.
Show us a picture of a magnet levitating above a sample of it, with the thermometer reading 20°C and it's a slam dunk.

 

[Crispy]

They have a video of the Meisner effect in action (other way round, the sample is levitating above the magnet)

Alex Kaplan (@alexkaplan0)

Here's the video from the paper

nitter.net

A ferromagnetic material (eg iron) does not behave like this. It either sticks or repels.

The research was done at Q-centre, which is a semi-independent organization at Sungkyunkwan University, which is a proper "ancient seat of learning" kind of place, so they've got bonafides.

I am cautiously excited.

 

[Crispy]

Aaaaaah. The critical current (the maximum you can push through it before the effect goes away) is a few hundred milliAmps. No use for magnets or electricity transmission. Also it's brittle and crumbly so you can't make cables out of it.
But if the mechanism is correct then it opens up the field to whole new avenues of research.

 

[Crispy]

Good writeup in Science:

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/breaking-superconductor-news

The synthesis method is so simple we should be getting reproductions in the coming days, if it's real.

 

[platinumsage]

Aaaaaah. The critical current (the maximum you can push through it before the effect goes away) is a few hundred milliAmps.

Can't you just have lots of them?

 

[Crispy]

This is a great blog post summarising the backstory and why there are two papers with different authors. It's infighting between researchers : The supervisor (who did not do the work and is not an expert) rushed the first paper through to Arxiv with the two actual researchers as co-authors. You need maximum 3 authors for a nobel prize. The second, more detailed, paper does not have the supervisor's name.

There is scepticism from the Condensed Matter Science establishment but lots of teams are working on reproduction. There's a big table in the blog post, which the author is keeping up to date with the various attempts. No clear results either way yet, but it won't be long now I think.

LK-99: The Live Online Race for a Room-Temperature Superconductor (Summary)

Disclaimer: I’m not a materials scientist. I may update this over time as I collate more informationUpdated 2023-07-31 – Spacebattles table (11 online replication efforts) On 22 July 20…

eirifu.wordpress.com

 

[Crispy]

This is very encouraging. Supercomputer simulations of the proposed mechanism work



This is from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in USA so the highest pedigree.

 

[Fez909]

Reported video of the first successful replication

LK-99验证_哔哩哔哩_bilibili

华中科技大学材料学院博士后武浩、博士生杨丽，在常海欣教授的指导下，成功首次验证合成了可以磁悬浮的LK-99晶体，该晶体悬浮的角度比Sukbae Lee等人获得的样品磁悬浮角度更大，有望实现真正意义的无接触超导磁悬浮。, 视频播放量 11583306、弹幕量 83045、点赞数 875351、投硬币枚数 299625、收藏人数 146158、转发人数 285114, 视频作者 关山口男子技师, 作者简介...

www.bilibili.com

 

[Fez909]

 

[Combustible]

Ok, so best I can understand their hypothesis:

The mechanism behind superconductivity is poorly understood.
Low temperatures and high pressures seem to be required.
They propose that stress on the inter-molecular structure of materials is responsible, caused by the slight change in volume of a material when cooled or compressed.
So, rather than cooling or compressing the material, they introduce impurities which distort the polycrystaline structure in a similar way.

Low temperatures or high pressures are required. Actually the mechanisms behind most superconductors are pretty well understood, they are so-called 'conventional superconductors' and are described by BCS theory. But for realistic material parameters without applying pressure, the maximum transition temperatures expected for conventional superconductors are expected to be about 40K (-233.15°C), and usually less than 15K. At very high pressures, conventional superconductivity has been found in hydrides near room temperature, but that is a far too high pressure (170 GPa) for any applications, and such structures are unlikely to be stable at ambient pressure.

There are also 'unconventional superconductors' for which the mechanisms are still poorly understood. These include the high-temperature copper-oxide and iron-based superconductors which cannot be described by BCS theory, and these have reached a maximum transition temperature of 140 K (-133°C). So any room temperature superconductor without applying pressure is likely to be 'unconventional'.

I wouldn't pay much attention to the proposed mechanism in the Korean paper because they don't really seem to understand much about theory of superconductivity. That doesn't mean their discovery is wrong however, because unconventional superconductors and especially the copper-oxide and iron-based superconductors have never been truly predicted from theory, but have largely been found by chance. But their data is also less than convincing, for example in their resistivity data is not clear that a good conductor like copper (with small but finite resistivity) would be distinguishable from a superconductor (with zero resistance).

 

[tommers]

Lots of other people claiming to have done this now.

 

[Fez909]

Lots of other people claiming to have done this now.

It's definitely looking like it's "interesting" rather than wrong, or a scam.

I haven't seen any resistance tests yet, which is obviously key to it being a superconductor. Everything has been about making specks of dust levitate, which is cool, but isn't proof.

 

[Combustible]

I haven't seen any resistance tests yet, which is obviously key to it being a superconductor. Everything has been about making specks of dust levitate, which is cool, but isn't proof.

One of the preprints has resistivity versus temperature


But its rather poor quality data, even though the resistance drops the value below the transition is still large and it apparently goes to zero and then increases again which doesn't suggest reliable measurements. And if you plotted the value of copper which is not a superconductor it would appear to be right down there close to zero because of the very large y-axis scale.

 

[A380]

 

[tommers]

Boo. But at least we still have nuclear fusion.

 

[HAL9000]

, but the material had some properties which looked like superconducting. A drop in resistance, but not zero resistance..

The reaction that synthesizes LK-99 uses an unbalanced recipe: for every 1 part it makes of copper-doped lead phosphate crystal — pure LK-99 — it produces 17 parts copper and 5 parts sulfur. These leftovers lead to numerous impurities — especially copper sulfide, which the Korean team reported in its sample.

Jain, a copper-sulfide expert, remembered 104ºC as the temperature at which Cu2S undergoes a phase transition. Below that temperature, the resistivity of air-exposed Cu2S drops dramatically — a signal almost identical to LK-99’s purported superconducting phase transition

I've not read the article, just had quick glance there seems to be a little bit of "why did they miss this"

LK-99 isn’t a superconductor — how science sleuths solved the mystery

Efforts to replicate the material have pieced together the puzzle of why it displayed superconducting-like behaviours.

www.nature.com

where as this radio program, start at 22 minutes and 27 seconds, scientist Michael Fuhrer is more forgiving. He presents the story as something that looked promising, but the behaviour of copper sulfide resistance changes seen with temperature increase is not widely known ...

BBC World Service - Science In Action, The science behind the Hawaii fire

The science behind the devastating fires that have consumed Lahaina in Hawaii.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Crispy]

You thought this story was dead? No. IT LIVES.



EDIT: This one is a good summary



tl;dr: still likely that these are just weird materials but not superconductors. But the door is still open.

 

[tommers]

You thought this story was dead? No. IT LIVES.

Yes. Love it when they do this.

 

[NoXion]

Potentially promising, But I'll keep the champagne on ice for now.