Caption: Viable superconducting material created at low temperature and low pressure by University of Rochester
Super conductivity is a virtually miraculous condition, where all electrical resistance in a material ceases to exist and wondrous things happen. If it were easy to achieve, many dreams of science—super efficient electric power transmission systems, vastly greater power storage devices, exponentially more powerful electric motors, magnetic levitation devices, superconducting magnetic refrigeration, and much more—would soon be reality. Until, now though, it has not been easy. Conductors must be cooled to almost absolute zero (−273.15 °C; -459.67 °F) to make it happen, so, unsurprisingly, the quest for super conductivity at temperatures any warmer has been very hard indeed, and ‘room-temperature’ superconductivity it has been said is simply out of the question.
Nevertheless, researchers now claim they have not only raised the temperature, but also lowered the pressure required to achieve superconductivity. In a historic achievement, scientists at the University of Rochester have created a superconducting material at both a temperature and pressure suitable 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 of physics. In a paper in Nature, the researchers describe a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride (NDLH) that exhibits superconductivity at 69 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 kilobars (145,000 pounds per square inch, or psi) of pressure.
Although 145,000 psi might still seem extraordinarily high (pressure at sea level is about 15 psi), strain engineering techniques routinely used in chip manufacturing, for example, incorporate materials held together by internal chemical pressures that are even higher.
Previously, the Dias team reported creating two materials—carbonaceous sulfur hydride and yttrium superhydride—that are superconducting at 58 degrees Fahrenheit/39 million psi and 12 degrees Fahreneheit/26 million psi respectively, in papers in Nature and Physical Review Letters (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05742-0).
Given the importance of the new discovery, Dias and his team went to unusual lengths to document their research and head off criticism that developed in the wake of a previous Nature paper, which led to a retraction by the journal’s editors. According to Dias, that previous paper has now been resubmitted to Nature with new data that validates the earlier work. The new data was collected outside the lab, at the Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories in front of an audience of scientists who saw the superconducting transition live. A similar approach has been taken with the new paper.
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