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Similar ceramic or crystalline superconductors took a long time to convert into useful cables. One technique is to fill a hollow silver(!) tube with powder, and
by jiggawatts 3y ago
Similar ceramic or crystalline superconductors took a long time to convert into useful cables. One technique is to fill a hollow silver(!) tube with powder, and then press it flat to compress the grains so that they touch. It may be possible to re-use similar techniques as-is, but that's hard to predict.
One theoretical paper suggests that the copper doping has two ways of occurring in the crystal structure, and that the more energetically favoured one is not the desired configuration. It may be very challenging to produce the desired crystal structure in bulk, and then it might not be stable over long time periods.
With most superconductors, they start to lose their benefits close to their critical temperature. So this material may not be able to support strong magnetic fields or high currents.
I expect thin-film applications to happen first. It's easy to control, easy to make large contiguous surfaces, and very useful for all sorts of things. Thin motherboards, LCD/OLED display panels, flat antennas, etc, etc...
- djtango 3y agoHave you got a source to read more about this? Why the choice of silver - because of its reduced reactivity vs other conductors?
- BasedAnon 3y agoi think i need to buy more silver
- pushkine 3y agoIsn't it true we've only tested superconducting materials at very low temps? Perhaps their robustness falls tremendously when not hundreds of degrees in the negative
- segfaultbuserr 3y agoIf this room-temperature superconductivity result is real, I have high hopes on the improvements they can possibly bring to the field of electrical metrology. Many precision measurement instruments require superconductive Josephson junctions, such as reproducing the definition of the SI volt [0], or magnetic field measurements with SQUID. But these exotic devices only exist in top research labs due to extremely high maintenance cost, including cooling requirement. Imagine a day when every medium-sized research lab has direct access to the quantum-accurate SI volt and nobody needs to send their voltmeters out for calibration anymore (although I don't know how hard would it take to make a microchip with 10,000+ Josephson junctions out of it...) [0] https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/quantum-voltage-project https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/quantum-voltage-proje...
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoThe 2V Josephson junction array chip (without the needed cryocoolers or support machinery) is $28,600 [1]. Full system is a bit under $300,000, without including installation, calibration, or training costs. They do still need calibration to ensure they're measuring the output voltage properly. [1] https://www.nist.gov/sri/standard-reference-instruments/sri-6000-series-programmable-josephson-voltage-standard-pjvs https://www.nist.gov/sri/standard-reference-instruments/sri-...
- FreshStart 3y agoJust make a standardized toner and allow printing it with a dryable liquid in a usefull Config?