Superconductivity 'fingerprint' found at higher temperatures New measurements at Cornell have shown that "high-temperature" superconductors may have the potential to go even higher, offering the possibility of creating room-temperature superconductors, or at least superconductors that will work with conventional refrigeration. Such materials could lead to far more efficient electric generators, lossless power transmission and other energy-saving applications. Superconductors conduct electricity with zero resistance, but only when cooled to very low temperatures. Recently developed materials called cuprates, consisting of copper oxide doped with other elements, superconduct up to temperatures as "high" as 150 kelvins (-123 C or -253 F).
String theory hints at explanation for superconductivity Until recently, string theory - long heralded as a 'theory of everything' - hadn't been particularly good at explaining anything. But at a workshop this month at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California, scientists have been using the theory to make progress in tackling one of the biggest puzzles in condensed-matter physics: the origin of high-temperature superconductivity.
Of the 92 naturally occurring elements, add another to the list of those that are superconductors. James S. Schilling, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Mathew Debessai - his doctoral student at the time - discovered that europium becomes superconducting at 1.8 K (-456 °F) and 80 GPa (790,000 atmospheres) of pressure, making it the 53rd known elemental superconductor and the 23rd at high pressure.
Ohio State University researchers have developed a new strategy to overcome one of the major obstacles to a grand challenge in physics. What they've discovered could eventually aid high-temperature superconductivity, as well as the development of new high-tech materials. In 2008, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) chose three multi-university teams to tackle an ambitious problem: trap atoms inside a light crystal -- also called an "optical lattice" -- that can simulate exotic materials and answer fundamental questions in physics. The deadline for the first phase of the challenge -- June 2009 -- is fast approaching, and the teams have been unable to make the atoms cold enough for their experiments to work.
Scientists Create Zero-Resistance Superconductor According to reports, Japanese scientist Yoichi Kamihara has discovered a zero resistance superconductor. Layered in iron and stabilized with phosphorous, the superconductor has a negative resistance at 269º Celsius. Currently he is researching ways to replace the phosphorous with other elements including arsenic.
MIT physicists believe they have identified a mysterious state of matter that has been linked to the phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity. Led by Eric Hudson, associate professor of physics, the researchers are exploring materials that conduct electricity with no resistance at temperatures around 30 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero.
Superconductors are materials that conduct electrical currents without any loss below a certain temperature. Normally, high magnetic fields destroy the superconductivity, turning the material into a normal conductor. Novel experiments on organic superconductors revealed a new superconducting phase between the normal conducting and the superconducting state, which was predicted in theory already in 1964. Scientists of the Universities of Geneva/Switzerland, Braunschweig/Germany, Osaka/Japan, and of the Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory in France as well as of the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf were involved in these recent investigations. Article: R. Lortz et al., Calorimetric Evidence for a Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov Superconducting State in the Layered Organic Superconductor k-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu(NCS)2, in: Physical Review Letters 99, 187002 (2007).