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Silicon Superconductors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the old-dog-new-tricks dept.

Diana writes "Physicists at CNRS have demonstrated superconductivity in silicon, the element long known for its semiconducting properties. High doping is the key — by substituting 9% of the silicon atoms with boron atoms, it was found that the resistance of the material drops sharply when cooled below 0.35 K. A small increase in the transition temperature is likely with further work."

7 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. OK, science is cool and everything by multiplexo · · Score: 4, Funny

    But you can make pretty much anything superconductive if you get it down below .5 Kelvin. I mean really, go much lower and you can make Twinkies superconductive much less boron doped silicon.

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  2. So..... by PHAEDRU5 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Superconductivity in non-superconductive materials, except where they've been doped to be superconductive.

    Makes me want to get back to the pub.

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    668: Neighbour of the Beast
  3. Be Sure To Practice Safe Si by ryanisflyboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    And just to make the article more clear: Let's substitute "boron" with Tom (hey, what guy wouldn't want more boron?), and "silicon" with Suzie (hey, what girl woudln't want more, eh, yeah.).

    "Because it has one fewer electron than Suzie available for bonding with neighbouring atoms, Tom incorporated into Suzie leaves a positively-charged "hole" at each site where Tom's "missing" electron would be paired with one of Suzie's."

    Well they did do it in France, you know.

  4. Missing the point... by physicsphairy · · Score: 3, Funny

    If we can turn semiconductors into superconductors, then we can probably turn my band conductor into a semi-conductor, which would at the very least mean less thrown chairs during parent teacher conferences, and less thrown chairs can only be good for Linux!

    (Yes, that happened; and yes, he is still in band director.)

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  5. Re:So who the fuck cares by Heir+Of+The+Mess · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's just a process of discovery to advance science. If we didn't go through these scientific processes of discovery then we would still have people running around thinking that everything was controlled by some big booming voice in the sky. Oh wait...

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  6. start the car by ElephanTS · · Score: 4, Funny

    I tried super-doping myself but it got boron after a while.

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    spoonerize "magic trackpad"
  7. Re:How useful is this? by Fred_A · · Score: 3, Funny
    What non-consumer applications will it have? Getting something down to .35K isn't exactly trivial...
    Agreed, I know I definitely am going to need bigger fans to get to that level of cooling in my machine. Much bigger fans.
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