World's Smallest Superconductor Discovered

arcticstoat writes "One of the barriers to the development of nanoscale electronics has potentially been eliminated, as scientists have discovered the world's smallest superconductor. Made up of four pairs of molecules, and measuring just 0.87nm, the superconductor could potentially be used as a nanoscale interconnect in electronic devices, but without the heat and power dissipation problems associated with standard metal conductors."

Comments

Re:What temperature does this work at though?!

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

(To clarify, superconductors do NOT work at room temperature -- the best ones (and the only ones we can really consider in practical applications) require cooling with something like liquid nitrogen. Moreover, this molecule is designed for size, rather than temperature, so I wonder if they had to compromise on how low you have to cool it. The lower temperature superconductors require liquid helium cooling, which goes into ridiculously cold territory.)

The article does not seem to indicate the temperature that it works at.

Re:What temperature does this work at though?!

[rnaiguy]

It needs to be below ~8k (from the article abstract) . Not even liquid nitrogen is enough, need liquid helium.

Re:Why does supercooling lead to superconductivity

[colonelquesadilla]

OK forget everything your highschool chemistry teacher taught you. There are fermions, and bosons, in a horribly oversimplified sense fermions aren't allowed to be in the same place at the same time, bosons are. In certain crystals, at low temperatures, electrons pair up, in what are called cooper pairs, and become bosons instead of fermions, they then are allowed to occupy the same space at the same time. When this happens the material becomes super conductive, because the electrons are indistinguishable from one another and can pass through any point without having to change energy levels and therefore being scattered.