(ORDO NEWS) — Few discoveries in science would revolutionize technology as much as a material that achieves superconductivity at room temperature and relatively moderate pressure.
A team of physicists led by Ranga Diaz, a physicist at the University of Rochester in New York, now claims they may have cracked it, demonstrating a rare earth metal called lutetium, when combined with hydrogen and nitrogen, can conduct electricity without resistance at 21 degrees Celsius ( 70 degrees Fahrenheit) and a pressure of only about 10,000 atmospheres span>the command reports.
This may seem like an unacceptably high level of pressure, but the researchers note that even higher pressures are currently being used in engineering processes such as chip manufacturing, so this is achievable outside of a specialized laboratory.
If this is confirmed by other researchers, it will be a huge breakthrough in creating devices that do not waste energy on heat when generating current.
Ideally, this could one day be used to build more efficient computers; faster frictionless maglev trains; superior x-ray technology; and even more powerful nuclear fusion reactors.
“With this material, the dawn of superconductivity in the environment and applied technologies has come,” the team said in a press release.
The researchers named the material “red matter” because the material changes color dramatically from blue to pink when it becomes superconductive and then to red when it becomes a non-superconductive metal.
Before you get too excited, keep in mind that for now, this is just one group of researchers sharing their observations.
The data has been published in the prestigious journal Nature and is sure to spark a lot of controversy. There is already a lot of healthy skepticism in the world of physics.
One of the main concerns is that the same group of researchers published claims of a similar discovery of room temperature superconductors as early as 2020. This statement was later withdrawn by Nature due to reproducibility issues and data issues.
Superconductivity is so important because usually when electricity flows through wires, say, from a power plant to your house or through the internal circuitry of your smartphone, it is met with friction. This resistance results in the loss of energy in the form of heat.
As early as 1911, researchers discovered some materials that lost this resistance under extreme cold and high pressure.
Under these extreme conditions, the quantum behavior of the electrons inside the superconductors is enhanced, allowing them to form so-called Cooper pairs, allowing them to travel through the material with perfect efficiency.
Superconductivity is relatively easy to detect because it also results in a material that emits magnetic flux fields.
But achieving superconductivity in materials at temperatures and pressure levels that would be efficient and practical has been incredibly difficult, something physicists have been working on for decades.
A team from the University of Rochester claims they have now come close to this with red matter.
To create the material, the researchers developed a gas mixture consisting of 99 percent hydrogen and 1 percent nitrogen.
Left in a lutetium chamber for several days at 200 degrees Celsius, the components reacted to form a striking blue compound.
The team then placed the material in a diamond anvil, which is used to place materials in extreme conditions. pressure.
As the pressure increased, the material underwent a “noticeable visual transformation”, changing its color from blue to pink as it became superconductive, which the team confirmed by measuring both the magnetic fields around the material and its electrical conductivity.
As the pressure continued to build up, the material turned bright red as it passed through its superconducting phase and into a non-superconducting metallic state.
Red matter exhibited superconductivity at about 21 degrees Celsius (70 Fahrenheit) when compressed to a pressure of 145,000 psi.
This is still about 10,000 times the pressure of the Earth‘s atmosphere, so it will still require appropriate structures and equipment to put it to practical use. It is unlikely that he will endow your phone with superpowers in the near future.
But this is a significantly lower pressure than other room-temperature superconductor candidates, which require pressures millions of times atmospheric.
One of the big problems right now is that researchers aren’t completely sure about the exact structure of the red matter. This makes it difficult to understand how it becomes superconductive.
There are indications that it may achieve superconductivity through a mechanism different from other superconductors, physicists Chang Qing Jin and David Seperly, who were not involved in the study. note in accompanying article Nature New and Views.
“The [structural model] … suggests that the authors’ samples contain relatively little hydrogen compared to similar superconducting compounds,” they write.
“Further studies will be required to confirm that [this] material is a high-temperature superconductor and then to understand whether this state is driven by vibration-induced Cooper pairs or by an unconventional mechanism that has yet to be explored. be revealed.”
Diaz admits there is still much to be understood about how red matter achieves superconductivity. But he remains optimistic that red matter is an important first step, even if it doesn’t make the best superconductor.
“In everyday life, we have many different metals that we use for different purposes. applications, so we will also need different kinds of superconducting materials,” Diaz said.
“The path to superconducting consumer electronics, power transmission lines, transportation, and significant improvements in magnetic confinement for fusion is now a reality. ”, he added.
“We believe we are now in the modern era of superconductivity.”
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