4 ms·

> (maybe if we get room-temperature superconductors). Since you sound like the appropriate person to ask, what is the current state of research towards room-te

• ThePhysicist 6y ago
  I'm not up-to-date on that research area but there's a lot of research going on (see [1] for an overview) and people are both trying new material combinations and trying to figure out what exactly causes superconductivity (which still isn't fully understood for high-Tc superconductors). BTW it would already open up many new opportunities if we had a superconductor that could be patterned as easily as a regular semiconductor and that would work at "high" cryogenic temperatures (e.g. -40 or - 80 °C), as those temperatures can be easily attained with conventional coolers that don't rely on liquid nitrogen or (much more expensive) liquid hydrogen or (super expensive) a mixture of different Helium isotopes. So far there's no fundamental reason that superconductivity can't work at higher temperatures, but there's also no clear path to room-temperature superconductors as far as I'm aware. [1]: https://phys.org/tags/high+temperature+superconductors/ https://phys.org/tags/high+temperature+superconductors/