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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."

1 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Anything but that... by djupedal · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    A small increase in transition temperature was the last thing we needed at this point. What little luck we had left was spent during the gravitational slingshot and none of us needed a glance at the holo-panel to know the ion shields had only minutes before a collapsed inner hull went from worry to worse.

    Without saying it aloud, we all knew the survival of the ship...our survival...was totally dependent on staying out of sensor range for just a bit longer. The sub-orbital alerting buoys, with their grid-multiplied scan vectors and frequency-hopping proximity background energy detectors, had only to exert minimal effort before group consensus deemed us an unauthorized guest.