5 ms·
Room temperature, but 1GPa pressure (or 145037 psi). An exciting step forward if it's reproducible, but not useful commercially. I'd rather see breakthroughs i
by dontwearitout 4y ago
Room temperature, but 1GPa pressure (or 145037 psi).
An exciting step forward if it's reproducible, but not useful commercially. I'd rather see breakthroughs in theoretical understanding; superconductivity in these regimes is still very poorly understood to my knowledge.
- loopdoend 4y agoYeah, why is 1GPa being referred to as "near-room pressure"?
- dontwearitout 4y agoAfter a bit of googling, the yield strength of some common materials is within striking distance of 1GPa (many steels are 0.25 GPa, silicon carbide is 3.4 GPa [1]). So perhaps it could be possible to embed this superconductor in a highly stressed supporting structure to provide the pressure. Not useful for cabling, but this could conceivably be used for room temperature SQUIDs [2], paving the way to cheap MRIs. [1] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/young-modulus-d_417.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/young-modulus-d_417.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQUID
- jetrink 4y agoWolfram Alpha tells me that to bring 10 sq. cm of the material to 1GPa would require 18x the bite force of a T-Rex. I don't consider the inside of a dinosaur's mouth "room pressure" either, but I could imagine a reasonably-sized housing capable of producing that force. Another comparison for scale: It is 1/6th the pressure at which artificial diamonds are manufactured.
- hinkley 4y agoT-Rex bite strength sounds like something Abe Simpson would say. 16% of diamond pressure is a lot.
- bhaak 4y agoBut diamond pressure is something that we are already capable of on a regular basis. This would put it into the realm of engineering problems at least for some applications if this claim turns out to be true.
- kadoban 4y ago> Yeah, why is 1GPa being referred to as "near-room pressure"? Because it's _very_ close to room pressure compared to other results. For example this team's last result (that's ... very questionable, but ignoring that), needed around 250 GPa.
- galaxytachyon 4y agoFirst you have to make it easier to conduct experiment on before you can get more understanding. If 1GPa is all that is needed, then yes this is a big breakthrough that can lead to wider research and more understanding.
- meltyness 4y agoThis is about 10,000x standard pressure. CRTs operate at 0.0000001x standard pressure, for reference -- they implode. For example if superconductivity is desired from a 1 square inch (6.5e-4 m^2) footprint of this material, a weight of 6.5e5 N must fully rest on that footprint. Near the surface of earth that translates to a mass of approximately 146,000 lbs. Something like the mass of 3 tanks.
- postalrat 4y agoA cup of water operates at 10,000,000x the pressure of the crt tube and doesn't explode.
- meltyness 4y agoPressure is a differential phenomena. You'll have to ask a smart guy what deposition, subtraction, injection, or teleportation process he's going to use to make a permanent diamond container that leverages the high compressive strength because I'm stupid.
- throwway120385 4y agoMaybe a problem keeping it in a pressure vessel, but it might be possible to produce such high pressures at very small scales in solid state devices without use of a pressure vessel. In that case it would be more about changing the shape or bond angle of some nearby material to distort the electric field and induce the desired pressure.
- slackdog 4y agoAFAIK they don't use pressure vessels for pressures this high; they use diamond anvils.
- FredPret 4y agoI wonder if it's possible to come up with a crystal or other material that has that much internal pressure - and isn't prone to unscheduled pressure release
- jws 4y agoA woodworking clamp with a handle in line with the screw will generate about 400lbs of force. That’s a reasonable model for how much axial force you will be able to exert with a screwdriver handle and beefy threaded screws. To get 150000 psi you have to squeeze something .0027 square inches, or 1.7mm^2, leave some room for edges and let’s work with 1mm^2. I’m not sure what interesting things can be done with this superconductor in 1mm^2, but squeezing the anvil isn’t outrageous. For perspective, TSMC will put 150 million transistors in that area. I kind of suspect that integrated circuits might flow at this pressure, so that might not be the application, but a superconducting ground plane and power plane would be interesting. Edit: Wait, maybe that’s just a giant capacitive load on all the signals. Do something smarter.
- thfuran 4y agoNever mind the silicon, that's about at the compressive strength of tool steel and significantly more than that of stainless.
- jws 4y agoI'm beyond my expertise, but silicon crystal's compressive strength is 3GPa, so maybe? Plus I assume one would surround everything with a "fluid" (or at least flows at that pressure) to distribute the forces. Silicon chip fluid suspended inside carbide anvil with a steel clamping structure and tightening bolts should work. Interconnects are left as an exercise for the reader. I have enough faith that this would work out that I'd put it in a sci-fi story, and not enough that I would invest in a startup.
- kadoban 4y agoHow close to a bomb would a device like this be? Feels like very close. Or maybe more importantly, how much of my desk would be left after it went off?
- rini17 4y agoThin 1 mm2 speck of high explosive is like few milligrams - estimating from youtube vids that's not much. Might punch tiny hole into the underlying PCB at worst.
- postultimate 4y ago1 GPa is less than half the yield strength of the best steels. All you would need to maintain the superconducting state is to put the material in a steel pipe.