Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
quantamagazine.org
Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
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Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#2The great thing about watching advances in superconductors is that any day we could discover the first true practical room temp superconductor and that one day changes the world immensely. I personally think we are likely to find one in the next 5-10 years, but that estimate is based on nothing but hope and optimism on my part.
Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#3The great thing about watching advances in superconductors is that any day we could discover the first true practical room temp superconductor and that one day changes the world immensely. I personally think we are likely to find one in the next 5-10 years, but that estimate is based on nothing but hope and optimism on my part.
Better scientific understanding of the underlying process (as highlighted by this article), better pattern detection (AI), and better simulation capabilities (quantum computing) all point to accelerating progress on this front.
What makes me particularly optimistic is the wide range of scenarios in which superconductivity is observed (also highlighted in the article); different mechanisms leading to a similar result suggests much better opportunity for the existence of a room-temp SC than if it were a highly similar pattern.
Certainly such a discovery has some serendipity and luck baked in, but given these advances across the board, 5-10 years seems like a reasonable bet (then another decade or two to widespread adoption). Let's hope we don't blow everything up before then.
Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#4The great thing about watching advances in superconductors is that any day we could discover the first true practical room temp superconductor and that one day changes the world immensely. I personally think we are likely to find one in the next 5-10 years, but that estimate is based on nothing but hope and optimism on my part.
For the most valuable applications it is also "good enough" to find a superconductor that can be cooled with cheap liquid nitrogen and retain the magnetic field tolerance, current-carrying capacity, and thermal stability of a superconductor cooled with expensive liquid helium.
Some so-called "high temperature" superconductors begin superconducting at liquid-nitrogen temperature or higher. However in real life applications like MRI and particle accelerators it turned out that they still need to be cooled with much colder liquid helium to get the desired magnetic field tolerance, current-carrying capacity etc. Finding a high-quality liquid-nitrogen-grade superconductor with these desired properties would be a revolution in itself.
Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#5The great thing about watching advances in superconductors is that any day we could discover the first true practical room temp superconductor and that one day changes the world immensely. I personally think we are likely to find one in the next 5-10 years, but that estimate is based on nothing but hope and optimism on my part.
I'm not a believer in that timeline. There's a large distance between superconductivity in the lab and commercial application (since you specified "changes the world immensely").
E.g. MRIs still use NiTi (critical temperature of ~10 kelvins), discovered in 1962, for a number of reasons (this is in spite of MgB2 having a critical T of ~39k, ReBCO with a critical T of ~90k, and BSCCO with a critical T of ~108k):
> In this paper, we analyze conductor requirements for commercial MRI magnets beyond traditional NbTi conductors, while avoiding links to a particular magnet configuration or design decisions. Potential conductor candidates include MgB2, ReBCO and BSCCO options. The analysis shows that no MRI-ready non-NbTi conductor is commercially available at the moment. For some conductors, MRI specifications will be difficult to achieve in principle. For others, cost is a key barrier. In some cases, the prospects for developing an MRI-ready conductor are more favorable, but significant developments are still needed. The key needs include the development of... [omitted]
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5472374/
Unfortunately, it probably won't be as simple as "step 1 discover material, step 2 manufacture, step 3 profit".
Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#6The great thing about watching advances in superconductors is that any day we could discover the first true practical room temp superconductor and that one day changes the world immensely. I personally think we are likely to find one in the next 5-10 years, but that estimate is based on nothing but hope and optimism on my part.
For the most valuable applications it is also "good enough" to find a superconductor that can be cooled with cheap liquid nitrogen and retain the magnetic field tolerance, current-carrying capacity, and thermal stability of a superconductor cooled with expensive liquid helium. Some so-called "high temperature" superconductors begin superconducting at liquid-nitrogen temperature or higher. However in real life applica…
I know we've got cuprates, superconductors formed with copper oxide, useful up to 133Kelvin, higher than Nitrogen cooling's capability of 77K.
I've read of them being used in wind turbines and particle accelerators, as well as concepts for fusion reactors.
Your comment makes it sound like they have insufficient field tolerance / current characteristics though. I don't think I've heard about Cuprates at all recently.
Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#7One thing that goes unmentioned about room temperature superconductors is that they store energy as well. U = (B2/(2u0))V. 2u0 is about 2.5E-6N/A2
So a 1m3 7T magnetic field would be about 20MJ or 7KWh. That doesn't sound like much, but collapse times could be microsec to generate GW of EM.
Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#8Wow. Go over to [1] and read the papers. This is good stuff. When someone finds new physics, interesting things result.
Tungsten disulfide/boron nitride superconductors? That's a new direction.
This article describes a new research result as a new research result, not as "trillion dollar industry by 2027". That helps credibility.
Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#9The great thing about watching advances in superconductors is that any day we could discover the first true practical room temp superconductor and that one day changes the world immensely. I personally think we are likely to find one in the next 5-10 years, but that estimate is based on nothing but hope and optimism on my part.
Too soon. I still tear up over LK-99
Re: Exotic new superconductors delight and confound
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the most valuable applications it is also "good enough" to find a superconductor that can be cooled with cheap liquid nitrogen and retain the magnetic field tolerance, current-carrying capacity, and thermal stability of a superconductor cooled with expensive liquid helium. Some so-called "high temperature" superconductors begin superconducting at liquid-nitrogen temperature or higher. However in real life applica…
I know we've got cuprates, superconductors formed with copper oxide, useful up to 133Kelvin, higher than Nitrogen cooling's capability of 77K. I've read of them being used in wind turbines and particle accelerators, as well as concepts for fusion reactors. Your comment makes it sound like they have insufficient field tolerance / current characteristics though. I don't think I've heard about Cuprates at all recently.
Cuprates are also brittle ceramics so they’re difficult to shape and larger pieces and assemblies tend to run into issues with grain boundaries that interfere with superconductivity, so there’s a lot of practical issues. The classic superconductors are very low temperature but are much easier to cast.