3 ms·
I know the differences between the two, perhaps I should've elaborated more. My point was that other than the Meissner effect, from a practical standpoint balli
by deepnotderp 9y ago
I know the differences between the two, perhaps I should've elaborated more. My point was that other than the Meissner effect, from a practical standpoint ballistic conduction is just as useful in terms of electron mobility.
- Robotbeat 9y agoBallistic conduction does raise the possibility that the bulk electrical resistivity of carbon nanotubes or graphene (etc) could be lower than (say) copper, but this is not practically as useful as superconductivity. The Josephson Junction (which is at the heart of SQUIDS--used for measuring extremely small magnetic fields--and also superconducting qubits--probably the most promising of the current quantum computing technologies) relies on the quantum mechanical nature of the phenomenon. Because of Cooper pairing, you can avoid resistance even at the interface between one superconductor and another, thus allowing the complete cessation of all resistance. This allows you to store energy in the form of continual circulating current with no energy input, something that wouldn't be practical with merely much lower electrical resistance enabled by ballistic conduction (which still has significant tube-to-tube resistivity). So I'd say that probably most practical applications of superconductivity are not transferable to ballistic conduction. Still nice to beat copper in conductivity (which hasn't happened with carbon nanotubes and graphene except for microscopic samples or with corner cases like high temperatures, high frequencies, etc).
- deepnotderp 9y agoFair enough, I wasn't thinking about the quantum computing side :)