Room Temperature Superconductor

A study about the discovery of a material that is superconductive at a temperature of roughly 15 degrees Celsius was recently published in the journal Nature. While this may be too low for your living room it is more than awesome for a superconductor.

Image by skeeze from Pixabay

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Superconductivity is something that normally only works at extremely low temperatures. So, the discovery of a material that has the most incredible property even at a temperature that we would find livable is one of the Holy Grails of modern physics. So, did we find one?

As you probably know, a superconductive material can carry electricity without any losses which we normally label as resistance. Current uses of superconductors include superconductive magnets which don’t need to be power as because of the non-existent resistance the electricity never leaves them if they are a closed circuit.

The current problem with superconductivity lies in the fact that most materials we use that can be superconductive require to be cooled to a temperature very close to absolute zero. For example, the material that we use for superconductors usually needs to operate at a temperature of 4 Kelvin. So a discovery of a material which can is superconductive at 15 degrees Celsius is quite astonishing.

The scientists took parts of sulfur and silicone and using hydrogen they created hydrogen sulfide and methane. Then they took these and put them onto a diamond anvil and created the extreme pressure of 270 gigapascals. After all of this, a laser was pointed at the material for hours.

But this material has its own problems. The first is that the scientists actually don’t know what they created. The diamond anvil prevents them from using x-ray or other methods that would show them what they created.

But the bigger problem lies in the fact that the superconductivity in the material occurs only at these extreme pressures. The material started to be superconductive at 140 gigapascals but even this is a bit too much for everyday use. But there still is a chance that the material can be altered chemically or in some other way to keep its properties even at much lower pressures.

Sources:

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2801-z

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