(Reuters) – A group of South Korean researchers published two papers last week claiming they had successfully created a dream material, a room-temperature-pressure superconductor. The breakout news of the discovery of a practical superconductor has set social media into a frenzy, and some stocks have surged in stock markets in China and South Korea.
A South Korean research team published two papers last week claiming that they had successfully created a room-temperature, pressure-pressure superconductor, a dream material. The photo shows a superconducting coil used in MRI. This photo taken near Paris, France, September 2019. REUTERS/Thierry Chiarello
However, this paper has not yet been sufficiently verified, and even if the discovery of a room temperature and pressure superconductor has been reported, it has been repeatedly denied later, so scientists are cautious. I haven’t lost my posture.
A superconductor is a material that allows current to flow with zero electrical resistance. If developed, it would not only revolutionize power grids, where energy is lost during transmission, but it would also be a leap forward in fields such as computer semiconductors, where electrical resistance is a limiting factor in computing speed.
Superconductors are already used in medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and part of quantum computers. However, superconducting properties are exhibited only at extremely low temperatures, and they have not reached the stage of practical use in a wide range of fields.
Two of the Korean research team’s papers were posted on a website where scientists share their findings before formal peer review and publication. Since then, researchers around the world, including at least two US national laboratories and three Chinese universities, have been working on the published material.
According to a Korean research team, the material exhibited superconducting properties at room temperature. The research team also revealed how the material, dubbed LK-99, was composed, using a relatively common mineral called lead apatite, into which a small number of copper atoms were introduced.
None of the paper’s authors responded to Reuters’ request for comment.
Multiple physicists told Reuters that there is no physical law that room-temperature superconductors cannot exist, and that the material shown by the Korean research team is easy to produce, and that other researchers can expect it to be as early as this week. He said that it is good news that it should be possible to produce results even in
If other researchers can replicate the South Korean team’s experiments, the development will prove successful.
Researchers from at least three Chinese universities recently announced they had created LK-99. A team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology posted a video footage of the LK-99 floating above a magnet.
However, according to the Qufu Normal University team, the material did not exhibit the property of zero electrical resistance, which is essential for superconductors. The team from Southeast University in China also measured zero electrical resistance at a temperature of minus 163 degrees Celsius.
South Korean experts announced the establishment of a verification committee on the 3rd.
Eric Toon, of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, founded by Bill Gates, notes the peer-reviewed and experimental replication efforts of renowned laboratories. “The measurements needed to demonstrate superconductivity are very difficult,” he says. “If the paper is correct, it’s game-changing, but we’ll just have to be patient and wait for more validation,” he said.
The trouble with LK-99 is that there are many materials in the world of superconductivity that are initially promising, but when scrutinized reveal failures. In the world of researchers, there is even a term “unidentified superconducting object (USO)” that is likened to “unidentified flying object (UFO)”.
Argonne National Laboratory physicist Mike Norman said, “The USO has a long history, with some notables saying they thought they had discovered superconductors but they didn’t. That’s just the way science works. “Even the smartest people can get confused,” he said.
Norman sees a problem with the paper. There may have been typos due to my hasty posting, but more troubling is the lack of data over a wide temperature range showing how the material behaved in and out of its superconducting state. It is said that
Sinead Griffin, a solid state physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, used a US Department of Energy supercomputer to simulate the material. As a result, it was found that the insertion of copper atoms into lead apatite caused an unexpected rearrangement of the material’s atoms, resulting in a material similar to existing superconductors. However, in order to produce this characteristic, it is necessary to place the copper atoms in places where they would not normally go, and mass production may be difficult. Griffin cautions that his simulations have limitations.
Even if LK-99 proves to be a room-temperature-pressure superconductor, it will take time to determine how practical it will be, said Michael Fuller, a physics professor at Monash University in Australia. points out. For example, no data are available on how much current the material can carry as a superconductor, which is important for improving grid capacity.
Still, physicists like Fuhrer believe that the paper is worth researching, given that there are still many unknowns about superconductors and the possibility of accidental discovery from common materials.
“There are countless unexplored minerals out there, and they probably have very interesting physical properties hidden in them,” said Argonne’s Norman.
(Reporter Stephen Nellis)
#Angle #Scientists #cautious #discovering #dream #material #normal #temperature #pressure #superconductor
2023-08-04 22:08:00
