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The Record For High-Temperature Superconductivity Has Been Smashed Again (technologyreview.com)

Posted by msmash on from the How-about-that dept.

Chemists have found a material that can display superconducting behavior at a temperature warmer than it currently is at the North Pole. The work brings room-temperature superconductivity tantalizingly close.

From a report: The work comes from the lab of Mikhail Eremets and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. Eremets and his colleagues say they have observed lanthanum hydride (LaH10) superconducting at the sweltering temperature of 250 K, or -23C. That's warmer than the current temperature at the North Pole.

"Our study makes a leap forward on the road to the room-temperature superconductivity," say the team. (The caveat is that the sample has to be under huge pressure: 170 gigapascals, or about half the pressure at the center of the Earth.)

8 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Pressure can be held. Heat not exactly. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The pressure might be high, but it doesn't require constantly putting energy into it. So I wouldn't call it much of a caveat. It still nearly solves exactly what we needed.

    -23C can be done with a better freezer. Make it really bulky, preferably out of an isolating material, and your energy usage will be small enough to run it on a local wind turbine or solar panel.
    It's enough, IMHO, to make consumer superconducting electronics a thing. Certainly, a superconducting CPU for the average user is now thinkable.

    What I want to know, is at what point it takes less energy to cool it, than it takes to not have superconductivity. It seems to me, as a layman, that we've already passed that point.

  2. The long-term implications by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We don't need literally room temperature superconductors in order to have a lot of the benefits that people associate with room temperature superconductors. -23 C is within essentially close to the range of conventional refrigeration equipment. Once one doesn't need to rely on liquid nitrogen cooling for superconductors, the general use goes way up. The pressure is of course a pretty big issue, but if for example one had something that was a superconductor at -30 C and 2 gigapascals that would be incredibly practically useful.

    And it is worth keeping in mind that even superconductors which require very cold temperatures are now being produced and used in large enough quantities that we can use them as part of the regular electric grid. The US Eastern electric grid already has a superconducting cable in Long Island https://www.energy.gov/oe/downloads/long-island-hts-power-cable and the Tres Amigas Superstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation is going to have superconducting lines to allow efficient transfer between the three major US grids (East, West and Texas). This sort of thing will also help renewable energy a lot; since right now, there's often more wind or solar power somewhere than one directly needs but hard to get it elsewhere, and then not enough wind or solar at some other time. More efficient grids mean that excess can be much more easily transferred to where it can be used.

    1. Re:The long-term implications by dunkelfalke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yep, a liquid nitrogen cooled superconductor has been used in a German city as a part of the local power grid for several years now.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    2. Re:The long-term implications by PPH · · Score: 1, Interesting

      We don't need superconductors. Period. The whole idea of moving energy long distances comes from the big utility model of business. Solar and wind can be generated locally, nearer the loads. What we need is storage. As this problem is solved more economically, the need to shift from generation to use sites goes down. And as this need goes down, the cost of losses to support temporary energy shifts becomes less of an issue.

      A side effect of the AC/DC conversion technology needed to support battery interfaces to the grid is that as the price of this comes down, it's use to build DC transmission lines comes down as well. As this happens, we will see more DC transmission used for medium and short distances.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    3. Re:The long-term implications by JoshuaZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That requires very large scale and highly efficient batteries. We might move there in the long-run but it in the short and medium run, having grid transfers makes sense. Batteries let you displace supply through time, and efficient grids let you displace supply through space. Both are useful.

    4. Re:The long-term implications by rpresser · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We *do* need superconductors. MRIs are an essential part of modern medicine.

      What we don't need is long distance power transmission by superconductor.

      This thread has been taken over by the unrealistic, unnecessary dream of superconducting power transmission. But there are a large number of other applications that superconductors enable. And doubtless even more that haven't been invented yet.

  3. That's a pretty big caveat by mykepredko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    170 gPascals ~= 1.68 Million atmospheres.

    I just did a quick Google search on "High Pressure Operations" and couldn't find anything that was within two or three orders of magnitude of this level of pressure. To make artificial diamonds, you need around 8.4gPascals. Maybe somebody with experience with high pressure operations can provide references to other operations at this pressure level.

    TFA references "USOs" (Unidentified Superconducting Objects" and I would argue that this is one of them.

    --
    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    1. Re:That's a pretty big caveat by ganv · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They are using a diamond anvil cell. These regularly achieve hundreds of GPa (gigapascals). Wikipedia says the current record is 770 GPa. No one is going to be using these superconductors at the temperatures and pressures quoted for practical applications any time soon. At the surface of the earth we can only create these pressures in tiny volumes (these samples are 5 to 10 microns on a side). But our growing understanding of superconductivity will open avenues to optimize and use superconducting materials in more practical applications. The fact that computational models predicted high temperature superconductivity that was later observed in this material is a big advance. Early discoveries of HTC materials were purely empirical. It is also exciting that the same models predict even higher transition temperatures in Yttrium superhydrides. It is the understanding of superconductivity that will eventually create technological advances, not likely the specific high pressure superconductors studied here.