Hot off the press: Levitating trains, Portable MRI Scanners & Efficient Electricity – A world with Room Temperature Superconductors
(Melissa McIntyre, University of South Australia)
Superconductors have widespread use in the modern world. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerlanduses superconducting magnetsto guide and focus the colliding proton beams. Superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) allowmeasurements of extremely weak magnetic fields, such as neurological signals in the brain. In medical physics, the use of a superconducting electromagnetis responsible for the rapid image enhancement and feasibility ofMRI.Their ability to conduct electricity without loss of energy through heat makes superconductors a highly efficient option for power supply.
Currently, the phenomenon of superconductivity is, for now,onlyachievable by cooling the material below its critical temperature (Tc),often less than -100◦C.The requirement of advanced cooling systems of superconducting materialsmakestheir application expensive to operate and maintain. As such, the discovery of a room-temperature superconductoris widely considered the“holygrail” for condensed matter and material physicists.
Recent developments
At the end of July 2023, two pre-print articles [1, 2] appeared on arXiv claiming synthesis of the world’s first room-temperature superconductor, LK-99, a copper-doped lead-apatitematerial. The work was met with both careful optimism and scepticism followinga controversy in September 2022, where the very same claim was madeof a different material in an article published in Nature in 2020.Following allegations of data falsification, an independent inquiry resulted in the 2020 article being retracted [3].
How can we validate the findings?
So, the question must be asked, “how do we know these recent findings are reliable?”.The story is stillrapidly developing as groups rush to replicate and validate the experiment, some methods arescientifically rigorous, others less so. More arXiv pre-prints surfaced after the original articles were uploaded from groups at the Berkley National Laboratory in the United States and the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science in China [4, 5].Both articles aimed to explain the high-Tcsuperconducting behaviour of LK-99through first-principals calculations and computer simulations. On August 1st, 2023,a group at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China posted a video on social media claiming to have synthesised LK-99and successfully demonstrated the Meissner effect (a behaviour exhibited by diamagnetic materials, i.e. superconductors, wherean applied magnetic field is pushed out of the material) [6]. Although replication efforts thus far are not definitive, it is a highly developing story and, if successfully replicated, the results will be a massive turning point for humankind.
What would a world with room-temperature superconductors look like?
If, with time, the results are replicated and industrial scale production is achieved, the world around us could change as we know it. Room-temperature superconductors would enable lossless energy transfer, whilst abolishing the need for large, heavy and expensive cooling systems. It could pave the way for frictionless travel, such as levitating or Maglev trains, and faster, more efficient computing systems.
For the medical community, room-temperature superconductors could enable cheaper and lighter medical treatment and diagnostic systems, such as superconducting particle accelerators and portable MRI systems, thus improving healthcare accessibility for low to middle income countries, as well as rural and remote communities. We remain cautiously optimistic that a world with room-temperature superconductors is on the horizon, but for now, only time will tell.
References:
[1] S. Lee, J. Kim, Y.-W. Kwon, arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.12008 (2023).
[2]S. Lee, J. Kim, H.-T. Kim, S. Im, S. An, and K. H. Auh, arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.12037 (2023).
[3] Snider, E., Dasenbrock-Gammon, N., McBride, R. et al. RETRACTED ARTICLE: Room-temperature superconductivity in a carbonaceous sulfur hydride. Nature 586, 373–377 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2801-z
[4] S. M. Griffin, arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.16892 (2023).
[5]J. Lai, J. Li, P. Liu, Y. San, X.-Q. Chen, arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.16040 (2023).
[6]https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1686286684424691712?fbclid=IwAR3Ax0TXkVEvPSvMeVQFuq6hpUFPOQH778UxbIEA23duopv0B-LSOnNcAxo