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Sinéad Griffin of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab publishes simulations supporting LK-99 as a room temperature superconductor
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- Title
- Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in copper-substituted lead phosphate apatite
- Published
- Jul 1 2023
Thanks for sharing, OP!
As a PhD Chemist who has done a lot of work with metal compounds (but not with superconductors), let me just echo the chorus of, "if this is real, this is a Nobel prize, and the most important new material of the 21st century."
Because holy cow, a ROOM-TEMPERATURE superconductor would be a massive MASSIVE game changer in every realm of technology!
Ambient-pressure as well. I'm trying not to get too hyped up for it, but yeah... wow.
Also very yes xD
Not just room temperature, the original paper claimed it was stable up to 127∘ C. So I guess we could call it a boiling water superconductor.
Holy shit. If that’s true this is far more significant than I originally thought. Originally I was thinking “ok, probably a little on the cold side of ‘room temperature’, likely requiring cooling for any significant current”
But…127C is actually crazy. With that kind of stability, I can’t help but feel like it’s only a matter of time before this starts being used one way or another, mechanical properties be damned.
Is this a "save us from fossil fuels" material?
No. Not yet. There's a list of reasons why this specific material is not good enough—low critical current, for one.
But its existence proves this entire class of materials exists, and its study would help us understand how, then make high-current normal-conditions superconductors that would spell improvements to practically everything electrical, including transmission lines (no losses!), and SC-loop energy storage (no batteries!). That'd be it.
This is the most important point. If true, this LK-99 material is the Wright brothers' airplane at Kitty Hawk in 1903. It's modest and barely works -- but it proves flight is possible. And then Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon in 1969 on a Saturn V rocket. Baking ceramic superconductors is like baking cookies so this may mean there's a whole zoo of potential recipes and candidates to dream up based on LK-99 which might have far more useful properties like higher critical currents.
Thing is, people saw birds and knew heavier-than-air flight was conditionally possible. The doubt was whether humans can ever reproduce this. At the time it wasn't even obvious how birds fly, exactly. Not to mention bumblebees. Freaking little wizards.
But normal-conditions superconductivity was never found in nature and there was (still is—it's a bit early) a infinitesimal kernel of doubt whether it's compatible with physics at all.
I'd say this is way bigger. I'd rather have mundane superconductivity and blimps rather than copper and airplanes.
Could you maybe expand on why it would be so game-changing? Thank you!
Superconductors conduct (sic) electricity in an extremely efficient manner and with an unimpeded current flow of electrons. The downside is that a material becomes superconducting at very low temperatures, ideally absolute zero. This isn't feasible, but we can get close to these low temperatures in lab conditions. Unfortunately it is not practical, portable and it's also expensive to do so.
A room temperature superconductor is a game changer because it would solve at least 2 out of these 3 problems. Since we don't need to cool them to an extreme degree, we could start using them in various areas more easily:
Magnetic resonance, for medical devices
Magnetic levitation, for transportation
Low loss power lines
Fast digital circuits
And possibly more.
Edit: https://tildes.net/~science/18wy/superconductor_megathread#comment-9ydf
And almost certainly huge for space applications given what a challenge excess heat poses on space vehicles. The first generation of space telescopes with superconductors are going to be wild!
It's hard to oversell the impact a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor would have.
One of the biggest problems with energy transference is loss to heat. Yes, we have really good conductors, but even our best experience resistance. This resistance causes loss through heat over time.
With a zero-resistance conductor, suddenly you can transfer electricity over vast distances without that loss. (Think solar power banks in the Sahara)
That is only one small application, however this is the infancy stage of this. I expect a gold rush of verifications are taking place at this moment as people with the right equipment attempt to replicate the results in real world conditions.
Room temperature is underselling it significantly, IMO. It's worth pointing out that this superconductor material works well past the boiling point for water, all the way up to 260'F/126'C which is frankly unbelievable. I was sure when we finally got here we'd be saddled with some material that was more of a pain in the ass than it would ever be worth due to not handling hot temperatures well enough to be used in hot climates or in applications where the material was too near a heat source. Turns out that's not going to be a problem at all... and the material is cheap, too.
Though this specific material would be a pain in the ass though. Like liquid nitrogen based superconductors, its a brittle, polycristiline substance, its reaction to amy mechanical shock will probably be to crumble, and it would be impossible to make anything resembling classical cable out of it. (This is why MRI machines still use metalic, liquid helium cooled superconductors, you just cant make good electromagnetic coils out of YCBO and the like)
Its lead based, so large scale use would need to considerheath, saftey, and enviromental concerns.
Additionally, it sounds like it has a really low critical current, which may make it inpractical for power transmission (though, without the need for cooling that other superconductors have, im sure other uses will be found).
Yeah, assuming this simulation reflects reality - the biggest step forward wouldn't be the practical applications. There probably will be of course, but the biggest step forward would be finding a field to further research and develop superconductors.
Which is absolutely fantastic, but I'll only believe it when I see experimental research for this. It's easy to miss one small, critical assumption when developing models.
Interesting tweet from Andrew Cote: https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1686215574177841152
How difficult are we talking? I imagine that could describe a pretty wide range between "turns out you can't synthesize it in your kitchen lab after all" and "this is completely uneconomical for 99% of practical applications".
So... theoretically there is a chance for levitating skateboards?
At least on special surfaces.
This is already a thing ,albeit far from a "stick it in your backpack" situation:
More dft from TU Wien, similar results: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.00676
How well do these simulations correlate to the real world?
That's a great question. Generally DFT is very successful, particularly for semiconductors. It's not so good for strongly correlated materials, or similar interactions. Also, DFT is a bit of a black box, and depending on the software package you use and the details you can get different results for the same material. Historically speaking you can't use DFT to simulate superconductors, all though there are some recent advances in that direction. Usually you use functional renormalisation group to predict superconductivity, but that's probably computationally intractable for this material.
Out of curiosity, are you in materials science or condensed matter?
Theoretical condensed matter
Although I wouldn't be surprised if the material in practice is not as good as the 'sales pitch', if the material can achieve superconductivity for say, 1 microsecond at these temperatures and pressures it'd be an insane step forward.
I'm really trying to hold my optimism in check because simulations in the past have shown less exciting results in practice. Even then I can't help but be hopeful about this. The applications would be insane.