Room-Temperature Superconductor Discovery Meets With Resistance

 

International Conference on Condensed Matter Physics
One hallmark of superconductivity is the Meissner effect, which expels all magnetic fields from a material — a property that allows a superconductor to levitate, as seen here. The researchers claim to observe the Meissner effect in their new material.


In a packed talk on Tuesday afternoon at the American Physical Society’s annual March meeting in Las Vegas, Ranga Dias, a physicist at the University of Rochester, announced that he and his team had achieved a century-old dream of the field: a superconductor that works at room temperature and near-room pressure. Interest was so intense in the presentation that security personnel stopped entry to the overflowing room more than fifteen minutes before the talk. They could be overheard shooing curious onlookers away shortly before Dias began speaking.

The results, published today in Nature, appear to show that a conventional conductor — a solid composed of hydrogen, nitrogen and the rare-earth metal lutetium — was transformed into a flawless material capable of conducting electricity with perfect efficiency.

While the announcement has been greeted with enthusiasm by some scientists, others are far more cautious, pointing to the research group’s controversial history of alleged research malfeasance. (Dias strongly denies the accusations.) Reactions by 10 independent experts contacted by Quanta ranged from unbridled excitement to outright dismissal, with many of the experts expressing some version of cautious optimism.

Previously, superconductivity has been observed only at frigid temperatures or crushing pressures — conditions that make those materials impractical for long-desired applications such as lossless power lines, levitating high-speed trains and affordable medical imaging devices. The newly forged compound conducts current with no resistance at 21 degrees Celsius (69.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and at a pressure of around 1 gigapascal. That’s still a lot of pressure — roughly 10 times the pressure at the deepest point in the Marianas Trench — but it’s more than 100 times less intense than the pressure required in previous experiments with similar materials.

“If it turns out to be correct, it’s possibly the biggest breakthrough in the history of superconductivity,” said James Hamlin, a physicist at the University of Florida who was not involved in the work. If it’s true, he said, “it’s an earth-shattering, groundbreaking, very exciting discovery.” But incidents involving the team’s previous work — including but not limited to a near-room-temperature superconductivity claim published in Nature in 2020 and retracted late last year — have cast a shadow across today’s announcement. “It’s hard to not wonder if some of the same problems that have gone unaddressed in previous work also exist in the new work,” Hamlin said.


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