High-Temp Superconducting Tape

DrLudicrous writes "The NYTimes is running a little overview of the current state of mass produced superconducting materials. A company named Superpower (another blurb on them here) is making a layered superconducting tape out of ceramic materials- ceramics that are high-temperature superconductors (no resistance at liquid nitrogen temperatures, 77K). This is much cheaper to maintain than technologies based on superconducting metals, which tend to require liquid helium (~4 Kelvin) temperatures. A note of contention: the article mentions that superconductivity is not well understood -- high-temperature superconductors are not, but classical 'low-temperature' superconductors are well-described under the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory."

Comments

Irritating article snippets

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Fascinating stuff, but some of what's in the article really makes me grit my teeth. I love this bit:

Even now, they have yet to develop a comprehensive theory to explain its appearance in materials as diverse as metal and ceramics.

Such scientific conundrums are of only passing interest at Superpower, a four-year-old subsidiary of Intermagnetics General, and at other companies like it. After years of false starts and setbacks, these companies say they are closing in on the goal of producing relatively inexpensive superconducting wire for power generators, transformers and transmission lines.

Success requires making yard after yard of wire, and eventually mile after mile. The focus at the companies, at national laboratories and at many universities is on questions that call for a genius more like Edison than Einstein.

Uh, bullshit. If they don't understand how it works, they're never going to move this stuff beyond the applications possible at liquid nitrogen temps. I'm not selling that short -- it's neat, and has a number of industrial applications -- but we're not going to be making power lines, or even wiring our houses, with that kind of cooling.

Re:Irritating article snippets

[stvangel]

Success requires making yard after yard of wire, and eventually mile after mile. The focus at the companies, at national laboratories and at many universities is on questions that call for a genius more like Edison than Einstein.

Uh, bullshit. If they don't understand how it works, they're never going to move this stuff beyond the applications possible at liquid nitrogen temps. I'm not selling that short -- it's neat, and has a number of industrial applications -- but we're not going to be making power lines, or even wiring our houses, with that kind of cooling.

I tend to disagree. Edison, arguably one of the greatest and most prolific inventors, wasn't really an scientific man and didn't understand how many of the things he discovered really worked. He was very persistent and intuitive in the way he would develop things. He'd just keep plugging away at different experiments till he found something that worked. Many famous inventions were an accidental discovery that worked without really understanding the underlying physics. Vulcanized Rubber, Penicillin, and even high-temperature superconductors themselves come immediately to mind. The majority of medicines and drugs were all developed this way. The first of the high-temperature semiconductors was found this way and was against everything known about semiconductors at the time. Many initial breakthrough discoveries were initially called impossible or impractical by conventional knowledge.

There is nothing to say there will even be superconductors at much higher temperatures anyway. What we really needed is an innovative thinker who can come up a unique way of using the existing superconductors we have. Perhaps an innovative refrigeration process to keep them cool in practical applications... Perhaps blending them with non-superconducting materials to make a semi-superconducting material with much higher strength and current carrying capacity? What about a way of encapsulating them in something like a nested Peltier Junction to keep the interior at superconducting temperatures? What about a way to incorporate the superconductors into the junction itself? There are many possibilities to experiment with. Even if you don't discover what you're looking for, there are lots of other things you might find.

Re:For what?

[pfdietz]

Where did you get the weird (and completely incorrect) belief that 'electrons get bled out of materials as the temperature decreases'?