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Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

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Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#121

Post by vasco »

lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

If research moves more to arxiv + discussion forums rather than paid journals, sharing research results earlier seems like a good thing, not bad. If they didn't publish early, when they published maybe things would be clearer for other researchers. But by publishing earlier other people have the choice to engage with it or wait for later. Seems like many people decided to not wait, so it seems like it was a good choice?

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#123

Post by [deleted] »

lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

[deleted]

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#124

Post by joefigura »

lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

This comment intrigued me, so I pulled together some information.

The first paper submitted is titled "The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor." It lists three authors: Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon. Its timestamp is Saturday, July 22, 2023 at 07:51:19 UTC. [1]

The second paper submitted is titled "Superconductor Pb10−xCux(PO4)6O showing levitation at room temperature and atmospheric pressure and mechanism." This paper lists six authors: Sukbae Lee, Jihoon Kim, Hyun-Tak Kim, Sungyeon Im, SooMin An, Keun Ho Auh [2]. Its timestamp is Saturday, July 22nd, 2023 at 10:11:28 UTC, or two hours and twenty minutes after the first paper.

In both papers the first author is Sukbae Lee and the second author is Jihoon Kim, and in both their affiliation is given as "Quantum Energy Research center, Inc." in Seoul. The first paper posted has Young-Wan Kwon as third author. The second paper does not have Young-Wan Kwon as an author, and has four additional authors with various affiliations.

The second paper appears to have been was prepared in LaTeX, and the first paper appears to have been prepared in Word. The title and abstract of the first paper explicitly claim the creation of the world's first room temperature and pressure superconductor. The title and abstract of the second paper don't explicitly claim demonstration of the first superconductor, though they use some terminology that sounds like superconducting properties.

The accusation is that Young-Wan Kwon published the first paper without the consent of the rest of the LK-99 team, listed himself as third author, and left off the other four. Two hours later, the rest of the LK-99 team stuffed as much as they had into the second paper, and released it as soon as possible.

To me that totally seems like what happened. It explains why there are two different papers from the same group submitted on the same subject on the same day, and it explains why the author lists are different between the two. I haven't yet looked in detail, but I'm betting it also explains a lot of the oddities that people have noted in the first two papers.

This also makes me way more excited about the possibility these claims are legit. The information so far is consistent with a research group that was forced to publish early, and who produced a superconductor through a fabrication process that is a bit tricky. There's nowhere near enough evidence to conclude LK-99 is a room temperature superconductor. But one failed replication doesn't prove LK-99 isn't a superconductor - if the fabrication process is finicky we'd expect to see a few dozen failed reproductions and a few successful reproductions

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008

[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#125

Post by Loic »

dmvdoug wrote: post #106
lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

Not just materials science though. I’m a longtime reader of Derek Lowe’s In the Pipeline blog, and he often emphasizes the trickiness of lab work and lab techniques. But the model we have of science from elementary and high school doesn’t give us room for the random, ephemeral things that come into play in actual experimental work. Our model is methods equal result, every time, even though jiggling your foot a little…

For computer science people, I always use the yield on wafers as analogy to explain how hard it can be to nail an experiment right.

Usually they understand directly because this is something they can easily relate to.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#126

Post by osamagirl69 »

carabiner wrote: post #32

Research out of Berkeley, 1 Aug 2023: theoretical analysis suggests high-Tc superconductors from apatite possible, points to synthesis challenges. > Finally, the calculations presented here suggest that Cu substitution on the appropriate (Pb(1)) site displays many key characteristics for high-TC superconductivity, namely a particularly flat isolated d-manifold, and the potential presence of fluctuating magnetism, cha…

If this holds to be true, this will absolutely be the key to this all.

Absolutely incredible that she was able to get this paper out so quickly, and with such a critical insight to the problem at that!

The paper also has this absolute gold statement:

>I briefly note that achieving such a crystal field environment should also be possible in intercalated twisted

>heterogeneous bilayers where selection of different hetero bilayers can provide the mirror symmetry breaking, while

>moir ́e twist can provide an arbitrary rotation of the upper and lower triangles

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#127

Post by was_a_dev »

vasco wrote: post #121
lucubratory wrote: post #98

Everyone in this thread needs to understand that particularly for materials science, and particularly when there is bad methodology documentation, it is really, really normal for early replication attempts to fail. What works in one lab will often need to be adjusted to work in another, with different equipment, altitude, humidity, all sorts of stuff. Making it even worse, apparently the original team can't even get…

If research moves more to arxiv + discussion forums rather than paid journals, sharing research results earlier seems like a good thing, not bad. If they didn't publish early, when they published maybe things would be clearer for other researchers. But by publishing earlier other people have the choice to engage with it or wait for later. Seems like many people decided to not wait, so it seems like it was a good choi…

I think this would vary greatly on the field. This example of results is one of the better examples imo

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#128

Post by RF_Savage »

jacquesm wrote: post #110
RF_Savage wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you replicate it before the paper with the stuff to replicate is published?

It would be a variation on what's already out there right now. And the whole problem is that the recipe is vague, in other words even if they have a working sample they don't know exactly what goes into making it.

Which is why it in arxiv and not some journal.

Seems like somebody pulled the trigger on publishing too early.

Re: Semiconducting Transport in LK99 reproduction attempt

#129

Post by yreg »

dekhn wrote: post #36
carabiner wrote: post #32

Research out of Berkeley, 1 Aug 2023: theoretical analysis suggests high-Tc superconductors from apatite possible, points to synthesis challenges. > Finally, the calculations presented here suggest that Cu substitution on the appropriate (Pb(1)) site displays many key characteristics for high-TC superconductivity, namely a particularly flat isolated d-manifold, and the potential presence of fluctuating magnetism, cha…

Some days I wish I could just run DFT on everything and have it spit out the ones with "interesting" results and then patent those. Unfortunately, this is not feasible (computationally) nor likely to produce very many true positives. I wonder if you could troll theorists into doing simulations of just about any substance by publishing convincing-looking papers in arxiv. Scratch that: we know it's possible.

We are starting to do things like that with some drugs afaik.
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