Russian scientists are looking for confirmation of the sensation about the achievement of high-temperature superconductivity

“The experiment is underway, we have loaded several samples, we are checking”

The superconductor that would allow us all to create power lines that transmit electricity without loss, and levitate high-speed trains without friction, still has not yet been found. The creation of such a material (and this would be one of the greatest technological breakthroughs) was announced two weeks ago by Korean scientists from the Research Center in Seoul.

Russian scientists of the Physical Institute. Lebedev RAS decided to repeat their experiment. A few days after it began, in an interview with MK, they said that they had not yet reached the result declared by the Koreans, but the measurements were still ongoing. By the way, the fact that the material of the Koreans, to put it mildly, does not pull on a superconductor at room temperature, was reported at the end of last week by several foreign researchers. Given the great interest in the topic of superconductors, we decided to figure out what it is and what is needed for their appearance.

First, about what an ordinary superconductor is. According to a physics textbook, this is a material whose electrical resistance, when the temperature drops to a significant value, becomes equal to zero according to the Meissner effect.

Today, the technology is used to create powerful magnets, for example, in the Large Hadron Collider, modern motors in shipbuilding, powerful electric motors. In most cases, so far these are only experimental installations, where there are devices that cool to a temperature bordering on absolute zero, or the temperature of liquid nitrogen, which makes the structures very expensive. To create a superconductor that does not require powerful “refrigerators” is an old dream of many physicists.

One of their main goals is the modernization of power grids. If the familiar electrical wires were made from superconducting materials, this would save up to 30 percent of energy. The economic benefit would be colossal, comparable only to the ITER thermonuclear power plant, on which nuclear scientists have been working for many years, but so far without success.

Superconductivity at room temperature would also make it possible to create more affordable, uncooled quantum computers, levitating trains on a magnetic cushion moving at great speed … Today, such technologies are already being created, but only in experimental mode. That is, the so-called Meissner effect, which consists in the fact that the magnetic field is displaced from the volume of the conductor during its transition to the superconducting state, until it can be widely implemented in practice without powerful cooling.

And so, on July 25, scientists Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim from the Quantum Energy Research Center in Seoul reported in a preprint journal (preceding the main publication) that they had found a compound of copper, lead, phosphorus and oxygen, called LK-99, which is just and is a superconductor at normal ambient pressure and temperatures up to 127°C (400 kelvins), that is, at “ordinary” room temperature.

This article caused a lot of noise in the scientific world, as the claimed results bordered on a revolution. Many scientific groups in different countries urgently set about experimental verification of this result. Russian specialists from the Physical Institute named after V.I. Lebedev RAS.

“We are not going to rush to conclusions,” says Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Center for High-Temperature Superconductivity and Quantum Materials. VL Ginzburg FIAN Vladimir Pudalov. – The experiment is underway, we have loaded several samples, we are checking. In the preprint of the Koreans, there was some kind of inaccuracy in the chemical composition and ambiguity and even contradiction in the results, it just didn’t make ends meet.

We managed to create a material similar to their lead apatite. So far, there are no data on its superconductivity at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure, but we are not in a hurry to draw final conclusions. Even if it is not there, the conductivity at 100 kelvins may be of scientific interest. If at least this is proven, then the rather budgetary LK-99 can replace many expensive superconductors.

According to the scientist, superconductivity at a temperature “close” to room temperature was achieved in 2019-2020 almost simultaneously by many scientific groups, including Russian researchers from FIAN. It arose already at -17 … -20 degrees Celsius, and this is an absolute record among the confirmed data. But … at a pressure comparable to the pressure in the earth’s core – about 1-1.5 million atmospheres. Under normal conditions, the superconductor almost instantly decomposed into components.

Research is ongoing. The results will prove the correctness of the way to achieve high-temperature superconductivity. MK is following developments.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29087 dated August 8, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Is the revolution in physics cancelled?