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Bell Labs Creates Plastic Superconductor
hoffmanm8 writes "Extending AT&T's grasp on every convieable non-software tech thing, scientists @ Bell Labs have found a way to make a plastic superconductor. (NYTimes, requires free registration).
This could be pretty cool/scary unless, of course, the plastic superconductor is to the early 2000's as 'cold fusion' was to the late 20th Century."
As it stands, lead is almost certainly a better choice of superconductor, since both require liquid helium coolant and the plastic is probably more expensive. The point, however is that this opens the door to a new kind of superconductor. the first metallic superconductor was mercury at roughly 1K, we eventually got up to wierd (and expansive) alloys that superconduct at about 30K (liquid hydrogen coolant could be used).
The first ceramic superconductors worked only at 30 or 40 K, but we quickly got up to over 100K. Unfortunately, they're murder to form into wires, or anything else useful.
Now this group has opened the door, we can expect many more superconducting polymers. The ideal result would be one that is easy to make and form, and can carry high currents or operate in high magnetic fields and liquid nitrogen temperatures.
Even if that is not achieved this new class of superconductors might have interesting or useful properties.
Nice troll.
The former poster is correct. We can manufacture plastics from basic elements, it is simply cheaper to pump oil out of the ground. As for making gasoline from raw elements, it is currently not (nor do I believe it ever will be) practical.
At the current time there are genetically engineered bacteria that can create basic plastics. You can grow these bacteria and have plastic as a by-product. Merely refine the plastic and alter it to your purpose.
Now, someone is going to argue that we don't have that technology yet or some such. I am willing to bet that we most likely do, but again, it makes no economic sense to do so with oil being cheaper from the ground.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
At 4 degrees above absolute zero, and the "higher" temp metals having a head-start in refinement/research etc, what do you see as compelling reasons to use plastic? Cost of material? flexibility? The temp difference is fairly significant and I'm just not seeing the point other the geek-factor.
I mean, given the way superconducting works, at some point you can make almost any material capable of passing electrical energy...
I must be having a stupid day.
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
Re-read the story... it is talking about a plastic SUPERconductor - quite different from a semi-conductor.
A semiconductor is a device that has electrical conductivity greater than insulators, but less than good conductors (IE: the stuff that CPUs are made of), whereas a superconductor is something with very high electrical conductivity.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
Think about this way. In few trillion years 4 degrees above absolute zero will be well above room temperature and all our dreams will be answered. :)
Is this the end yet?...How 'bout now...how 'bout now...how 'bout now?
Lego set #10892
Maglev train set, 6 figures, 12 feet of superconducting tracks. $4,999.99. Some assembly required.
(I'll take two, please.)
Bell Labs went with Lucent Technologies when it spun off from AT&T in 1996.
Personally, I think I'll live to see Moore's Law get sent to /dev/null with things like "Man will not fly" and "Man will never walk on the moon"*.
With the extensive probing into quantum machinery**, the question is, "How soon will it be that processors create their own dimension to perform advanced mathematical calculations. The question is, "When will be using planck's width to record data rather than Fe-Si combinates?" The question is, "Will the term 'wireless' come to mean that a small quantum bridge is created by the computer to read the data on another computer atoms?"
Or, one of my friend's favourite questions: Will a molecule count as a network?
You can keep your one atom transistors, I'm waiting for the chance to upgrade to a 2 1 H isotope!***
*No replies on the one-sided Fox special, please
**This has actually been around for a few years already, and has been mentioned on slashdot a few times, as well as making it to Michael Crichton's "Timeline", as a background to the ideas conveyed in the story.
***Don't tell me not to hold my breath, that, too, is another AnonCow-esk comment
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Editor, please fix the title on this article.
At the moment, it "Bell Labs Creates Plastic
Semiconductor". However, both the Slashdot
article and (more significantly) the NYTimes
article refer to plastic superconductors.
It should be something along the lines of:
"Bell Labs Creates Plastic Superconductor"
http://channel.nytimes.com/2001/03/08/science/08SU PE.html
now of course, Lucent has a website, with the press release here. The page with photos of the team can be found here on the bell labs site.
As Usual, the story was first reported in NATURE (NOTE - free registration gives some access, paid registration gives more)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The capabilities of conjugated polymers are expanding at a great rate, perhaps because of the backing that R&D is now getting from some VERY large companies. This is especially true since the founders of the field received the recent Nobel Prize in Chemistry (I'll admit to being biased as one of them is my boss).
The promise of these materials is more that of lighter and cheaper than anything else at this point. That may change in the near future though. It's not that they are better materials that those that are in use now, but rather the fact that they are perhaps a bit easier and cheaper to process, relatively inexpensive to make, and perhaps more suited to particular applications. For example, there are groups working on making emissive displays out of semiconducting polymers. If you can make them on a plastic substrate rather than glass, you have a display that you don't have to worry about breaking when you drop your laptop/handheld/cellphone. Now, if we can make one that is easier to see in the sunlight and gives you longer battery life, those are pluses as well.
As far as the superconductors go, we were sure it would happen someday as one of the primary excitations of these materials is what is called a bipolaron. It's basically a Cooper Pair in a conjugated polymer (Cooper Pairs being that thing that makes ceramic superconductors do their thing). The primary problem was getting the polymers to order, or line up, properly. So now it's been done. Yes, it's at a very cold temperature, but all of the first traditional superconductors were down there pretty far too.
By the way, remember that guy who figured out how to make the laser? He didn't know what to do with it at first either. It didn't take too long before it gave people ideas...
"Twenty-five signatures turns the most frightful stupidity into an opinion" -Kirkegaard