Technology News

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Scientists one-step closer to creating superconductivity at room temperature

Superconducting materials capable of working at room temperatures hold the key to transporting energy without any loss, travelling in magnetically levitated trains, or carrying out medical imaging (MRI) with small-scale equipments.

Washington, June 8 : Superconducting materials capable of working at room temperatures hold the key to transporting energy without any loss, travelling in magnetically levitated trains, or carrying out medical imaging (MRI) with small-scale equipments.

Now, researchers at CNRS have taken another step forward towards realising this goal.

In a study published in the May 31 issue of the journal Nature, they have revealed the metallic nature of a class of so-called critical high-temperature superconducting materials, which they believe will pave the way to an understanding of this phenomenon.

Superconductivity is basically a state of matter characterized by zero electrical resistance and impermeability to a magnetic field.

It is already used in medical imaging (MRI devices), and researchers believe it could find spectacular applications in the transport and storage of electrical energy without loss, the development of transport systems based on magnetic levitation, wireless communication and even quantum computers.

However, for now, such applications have been limited by the fact that superconductivity only occurs at very low temperatures.

Researchers at the National Laboratory for Pulsed Magnetic Fields, working together with scientists from Sherbrooke, have observed 'quantum oscillations', while working with intense magnetic fields.

They subjected their samples to a magnetic field of as much as 62 teslas (a million times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field), at very low temperatures (between 1.5 K and 4.2 K).

They found the magnetic field destroying the superconducting state, and the sample, in a normal state, showing an oscillation of its electrical resistance as a function of the magnetic field.

According to the research team, such an oscillation is characteristic of metals.

It means that, in the samples that were studied, the electrons behaved in the same way as in ordinary metals, the scientists said.

According to the team, the new class of superconductors, which are easier and cheaper to use, has given fresh impetus to the race to find ever higher critical temperatures, with the ultimate goal of obtaining materials which are superconducting at room temperature.

ANI