7 ms·

The Quest for Room-Temperature Superconductors

50 points by eaguyhn 8y ago

ah27182 8y ago
What are super conductors used for? I say this as Im fairly certain we arent solely looking for a more efficient way to transfer electricity.
- sgt101 8y ago
  High powered magnets - these will improve scanners (see comment below), turbines, motors, generators. YBCO superconductors can be fabricated into a flexible tape which is then useful for creating these kind of devices, but YBCO needs to be cooled with liquid nitrogen.
- Bjartr 8y ago
  Current power transmission losses can be between 8%-15%, cutting those to 0 would be a pretty big deal. https://blog.schneider-electric.com/energy-management-energy-efficiency/2013/03/25/how-big-are-power-line-losses/ https://blog.schneider-electric.com/energy-management-energy...
- mlevental 8y ago
  well you're not wrong but a room tc superconductor would indeed enable us to cut down on transmission costs of power. I'm not sure if this is obvious but the only reason national powergrids are AC and not DC is because you can step down AC current and therefore have much lower heat dissipation through the transmission lines. So at the minimum you'd get cheaper power by eliminating all the resistive losses and stepper circuits . But also superconductors are used in MRI machines where right now they're kept below Tc using liquid nitrogen, which is hard to control (search MRI quenching). So room temp superconductors would make MRIs cheaper, which would be a boon to the developing world.
  - amper5and 8y ago
    Most MR units these days use liquid helium not liquid nitrogen. And there is at least one cryogen free unit on the market right now, though it’s definitely not the kind (open, 0.5T) you’d use to replace most hospital magnets.
  - wl 8y ago
    A superconductor suitable for use in an electromagnet that could be cooled with liquid nitrogen alone would be practically "room temperature" as far as these things go. Liquid nitrogen is cheap and abundant, as opposed to liquid helium which is required to get down to 4 K. As stands at the moment, some older MRIs use liquid nitrogen to help insulate liquid helium. Newer machines use liquid helium alone.
    - mrfusion 8y ago
      Doesn’t rebco tape use liquid nitrogen?
      - wl 8y ago
        It's been awhile since I've paid attention to the field, so apologies if I get this wrong. I was under the impression that cuprate superconductors were unsuitable for use in MRI magnets because they only superconduct across clusters of microdomains, making it impossible (at least with current technology) to generate the large, strong, and uniform field necessary for the application. There seems to be ongoing research into producing suitable magnets with cuprates, but I don't know if the problem has been solved yet. In any case, there are no commercially available MRI machines that use cuprate superconductors.
- chongli 8y ago
  Superconductors can be used to build ultra-powerful electromagnets. These are what you'll find in particle accelerators and experimental fusion reactors (tokamaks) as well as MRI machines. All of these devices are extremely large and very expensive, partly because of the equipment used to maintain them at cryogenic temperatures. If you could build a room temperature superconductor, you could shrink these machines and reduce their cost and complexity by a large amount. Additionally, you would open up new applications for superconducting magnets, such as maglev trains. As others have said, reducing electrical transmission losses is another huge benefit. It's only the beginning of the potential applications of room temperature superconductors though.
- dekhn 8y ago
  Our NMR machine that was used for discovering the structure of biomolecules had a superconducting magnet. The whole machine was pretty impressive (massive steel chamber filled with cryo-cooled magnetic coils). You'd "inject" current once in a while and it would swirl around for weeks/months at a time.
- Junk_Collector 8y ago
  Novel magnetic effects, efficient power transfer, some special forms of supercomputers. Room temp super-conductors would change the world in interesting ways assuming of course that they could also be manufactured at scale. Most importantly it would require an unlocking of fundamental properties in electromagnetism, chemistry, and quantum physics that as of today is still very much unknown.
- raducu 8y ago
  You could have a world-wide power grid; you could power all humanity's energy needs by having a couple of "tiny" (100kmX100km) solar farms spread between world deserts located on different timezones so you won't need any storage.
- SigmundA 8y ago
  Using for energy storage would be a big deal see superconductive storage rings. Potentially the holy grail of batteries.
hliyan 8y ago
> zero resistance in the material at temperatures higher than 8 Fahrenheit (-13 Celsius), perhaps as high as 44 Fahrenheit (7 Celsius) > The teams synthesized only about a dust-speck worth of [lanthanum hydride] from expensive ingredients crushed to unfathomable pressures between hand-cranked diamond halves While the temperatures are amazing (when I was young, superconductivity above 0 Celsius was the stuff of science fiction), the material might not have commercial applications in the near future. Instead, why not use active cooling and powerful insulation? Like this: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/world-first-as-wind-turbine-upgraded-with-high-temperature-superconductor/3009780.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/world-first-as-wind-turb...
- blamarvt 8y ago
  I feel like the article is misleading insofar as to omit the material has to also be under extreme pressure to remain a superconductor.
auto 8y ago
My high school physics teacher (~2006) told us once when discussing career prospects that if you could build/discover a material that was a superconductor at room temperature, you'd probably end up the richest person in the world. I've never forgotten that, and it sounds like the challenge still stands.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Yeah, well, that can be said for a lot of things that are probably impossible. FTL dirve? Teleporter? Working lightsaber?
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    Well, from those 3 a teleporter would probably have some economical use, the other 2 not so much. Besides, "probably impossible" seems to be a large overrating of our knowledge of superconductivity.
    - jandrese 8y ago
      You don't think there would be an economical use for FTL travel? I mean I guess it depends on the details (it requires a spaceship that is a billion metric tons and requires a dozen working fusion cores to power it to get to 1.1C for example), but I can imagine a ton of uses for FTL technology. Transporters would be more useful in a day to day setting, but that doesn't mean FTL is academic.
  - notTyler 8y ago
    A working lightsaber would make you rich for a week until people started accidentally chopping off their limbs and suing you.
    - ben_w 8y ago
      “It’s a sword. They’re not meant to be safe.” Probably be a really useful piece of industrial equipment, not just a really strange weapon.
whoevercares 8y ago
I heard China was the world leader on superconductors ten years ago, not sure if it still holds now
klimt 8y ago
> one of the researchers carefully sandwiches lanthanum foil and hydrogen gas in between the diamonds’ flat surfaces. Then [...] the researcher generates pressures of at least 170 GPa—pressures similar to those in the Earth’s core—between the diamond tips. Then [...] the team heat the material with laser pulses, producing the chemical reaction that would create the material. It is always humbling to read about what it takes to do cutting edge research. This article was good at conveying the efforts required. I do wonder if studying these simple hydrogen-based compounds is a dead end though. I believe the same mechanism (phonon-electron coupling) is at work here, than in conventional superconductors, so the physics is well-understood. It's been established that this mechanism can only support superconductivity up to 30-40 K at normal pressures [1]. Unconventional superconductors, on the other hand, don't have this hard limit, so there is probably more knowledge to be gained from studying those, which could be used to propose new, better superconductors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_theory
- IsTom 8y ago
  Stress on surface of tempered glass in in range of 100 MPa. It's a lot less than the 170 GMa in this case, but perhaps it could get a bit higher in a similar material and the threshold of superconductivity could be lowered.
jccalhoun 8y ago
I remember when I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s there was all this talk about room-temperature superconductors being right around the corner. Getting to 8 degrees F is a big advance even if it is only tiny amounts.
brohee 8y ago
“Someone else has to prove it independently, otherwise it’s invalid,” Take notes, psychology.
Jesus_Jones 8y ago
Ever read Larry Niven's "Ringworld"? Don't forget that the Puppeteers destroyed the Ringworld's technological civilization by creating a substance that destroyed their superconductors. If we ever invent them it will be fantastic, but it will also be a central vulnerability to our civilization - but I guess we have other ones already.

50 points by eaguyhn 8y ago

What are super conductors used for? I say this as Im fairly certain we arent solely looking for a more efficient way to transfer electricity.

sgt101 8y ago
High powered magnets - these will improve scanners (see comment below), turbines, motors, generators. YBCO superconductors can be fabricated into a flexible tape which is then useful for creating these kind of devices, but YBCO needs to be cooled with liquid nitrogen.
Bjartr 8y ago
Current power transmission losses can be between 8%-15%, cutting those to 0 would be a pretty big deal. https://blog.schneider-electric.com/energy-management-energy-efficiency/2013/03/25/how-big-are-power-line-losses/ https://blog.schneider-electric.com/energy-management-energy...
mlevental 8y ago
well you're not wrong but a room tc superconductor would indeed enable us to cut down on transmission costs of power. I'm not sure if this is obvious but the only reason national powergrids are AC and not DC is because you can step down AC current and therefore have much lower heat dissipation through the transmission lines. So at the minimum you'd get cheaper power by eliminating all the resistive losses and stepper circuits . But also superconductors are used in MRI machines where right now they're kept below Tc using liquid nitrogen, which is hard to control (search MRI quenching). So room temp superconductors would make MRIs cheaper, which would be a boon to the developing world.
- amper5and 8y ago
  Most MR units these days use liquid helium not liquid nitrogen. And there is at least one cryogen free unit on the market right now, though it’s definitely not the kind (open, 0.5T) you’d use to replace most hospital magnets.
- wl 8y ago
  A superconductor suitable for use in an electromagnet that could be cooled with liquid nitrogen alone would be practically "room temperature" as far as these things go. Liquid nitrogen is cheap and abundant, as opposed to liquid helium which is required to get down to 4 K. As stands at the moment, some older MRIs use liquid nitrogen to help insulate liquid helium. Newer machines use liquid helium alone.
  - mrfusion 8y ago
    Doesn’t rebco tape use liquid nitrogen?
    - wl 8y ago
      It's been awhile since I've paid attention to the field, so apologies if I get this wrong. I was under the impression that cuprate superconductors were unsuitable for use in MRI magnets because they only superconduct across clusters of microdomains, making it impossible (at least with current technology) to generate the large, strong, and uniform field necessary for the application. There seems to be ongoing research into producing suitable magnets with cuprates, but I don't know if the problem has been solved yet. In any case, there are no commercially available MRI machines that use cuprate superconductors.
chongli 8y ago
Superconductors can be used to build ultra-powerful electromagnets. These are what you'll find in particle accelerators and experimental fusion reactors (tokamaks) as well as MRI machines. All of these devices are extremely large and very expensive, partly because of the equipment used to maintain them at cryogenic temperatures. If you could build a room temperature superconductor, you could shrink these machines and reduce their cost and complexity by a large amount. Additionally, you would open up new applications for superconducting magnets, such as maglev trains. As others have said, reducing electrical transmission losses is another huge benefit. It's only the beginning of the potential applications of room temperature superconductors though.
dekhn 8y ago
Our NMR machine that was used for discovering the structure of biomolecules had a superconducting magnet. The whole machine was pretty impressive (massive steel chamber filled with cryo-cooled magnetic coils). You'd "inject" current once in a while and it would swirl around for weeks/months at a time.
Junk_Collector 8y ago
Novel magnetic effects, efficient power transfer, some special forms of supercomputers. Room temp super-conductors would change the world in interesting ways assuming of course that they could also be manufactured at scale. Most importantly it would require an unlocking of fundamental properties in electromagnetism, chemistry, and quantum physics that as of today is still very much unknown.
raducu 8y ago
You could have a world-wide power grid; you could power all humanity's energy needs by having a couple of "tiny" (100kmX100km) solar farms spread between world deserts located on different timezones so you won't need any storage.
SigmundA 8y ago
Using for energy storage would be a big deal see superconductive storage rings. Potentially the holy grail of batteries.

hliyan 8y ago

> zero resistance in the material at temperatures higher than 8 Fahrenheit (-13 Celsius), perhaps as high as 44 Fahrenheit (7 Celsius) > The teams synthesized only about a dust-speck worth of [lanthanum hydride] from expensive ingredients crushed to unfathomable pressures between hand-cranked diamond halves While the temperatures are amazing (when I was young, superconductivity above 0 Celsius was the stuff of science fiction), the material might not have commercial applications in the near future. Instead, why not use active cooling and powerful insulation? Like this: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/world-first-as-wind-turbine-upgraded-with-high-temperature-superconductor/3009780.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/world-first-as-wind-turb...

blamarvt 8y ago
I feel like the article is misleading insofar as to omit the material has to also be under extreme pressure to remain a superconductor.

auto 8y ago

My high school physics teacher (~2006) told us once when discussing career prospects that if you could build/discover a material that was a superconductor at room temperature, you'd probably end up the richest person in the world. I've never forgotten that, and it sounds like the challenge still stands.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Yeah, well, that can be said for a lot of things that are probably impossible. FTL dirve? Teleporter? Working lightsaber?
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  Well, from those 3 a teleporter would probably have some economical use, the other 2 not so much. Besides, "probably impossible" seems to be a large overrating of our knowledge of superconductivity.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    You don't think there would be an economical use for FTL travel? I mean I guess it depends on the details (it requires a spaceship that is a billion metric tons and requires a dozen working fusion cores to power it to get to 1.1C for example), but I can imagine a ton of uses for FTL technology. Transporters would be more useful in a day to day setting, but that doesn't mean FTL is academic.
- notTyler 8y ago
  A working lightsaber would make you rich for a week until people started accidentally chopping off their limbs and suing you.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    “It’s a sword. They’re not meant to be safe.” Probably be a really useful piece of industrial equipment, not just a really strange weapon.

whoevercares 8y ago

I heard China was the world leader on superconductors ten years ago, not sure if it still holds now

klimt 8y ago

> one of the researchers carefully sandwiches lanthanum foil and hydrogen gas in between the diamonds’ flat surfaces. Then [...] the researcher generates pressures of at least 170 GPa—pressures similar to those in the Earth’s core—between the diamond tips. Then [...] the team heat the material with laser pulses, producing the chemical reaction that would create the material. It is always humbling to read about what it takes to do cutting edge research. This article was good at conveying the efforts required. I do wonder if studying these simple hydrogen-based compounds is a dead end though. I believe the same mechanism (phonon-electron coupling) is at work here, than in conventional superconductors, so the physics is well-understood. It's been established that this mechanism can only support superconductivity up to 30-40 K at normal pressures [1]. Unconventional superconductors, on the other hand, don't have this hard limit, so there is probably more knowledge to be gained from studying those, which could be used to propose new, better superconductors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_theory

IsTom 8y ago
Stress on surface of tempered glass in in range of 100 MPa. It's a lot less than the 170 GMa in this case, but perhaps it could get a bit higher in a similar material and the threshold of superconductivity could be lowered.

jccalhoun 8y ago

I remember when I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s there was all this talk about room-temperature superconductors being right around the corner. Getting to 8 degrees F is a big advance even if it is only tiny amounts.

brohee 8y ago

“Someone else has to prove it independently, otherwise it’s invalid,” Take notes, psychology.

Jesus_Jones 8y ago

Ever read Larry Niven's "Ringworld"? Don't forget that the Puppeteers destroyed the Ringworld's technological civilization by creating a substance that destroyed their superconductors. If we ever invent them it will be fantastic, but it will also be a central vulnerability to our civilization - but I guess we have other ones already.