4 ms·

This is my first comment on this material, because I've been skeptical, but this result shouldn't be understated. It basically confirms the existence of a new f

by klimt 3y ago

This is my first comment on this material, because I've been skeptical, but this result shouldn't be understated. It basically confirms the existence of a new family of high-temperature superconductors, the first of its kind since the cuprates in 1986. And for context, in the initial paper on the cuprates the critical temperature was measured to be 36 K. By synthesising other members of the cuprate family and optimising the growth, it was possible to raise it to 127 K in the subsequent few years. The 110 K seen today for LK-99 sets a baseline, and it's a very good baseline at that. Confirm me as excited.

nemo44x 3y ago
My intuition tells me that the theory here will be more interesting than the current application, LK99. If it pans out then thousands of brilliant minds will iterate on the theory to expand it and to refine applications of it.
klimt 3y ago
The jump at 250K looks like bad contacts to me that fixed themselves during cooldown. Rewiring the sample and remeasuring should get rid of it. The field dependence is indeed a bit weird. One would expect the critical temperature to reduce with increasing magnetic field (magnetic field weakens superconductivity), but here you don't see that. It's expected that the superconductivity is very strong for such a high critical temperature and the fields applied are not strong enough, but with better measurements you should still see a small reduction in the critical temperature.
danpalmer 3y ago
> It basically confirms the existence of a new family of high-temperature superconductors, the first of its kind since the cuprates in 1986. Specifically, it seems, a family based on a novel superconductivity mechanism. If this a real effect, there's not only significant scope to improve LK-99 synthesis, but also scope to find new materials that could use the same mechanism that operate at even higher temperatures, are easier or cheaper to produce, or that can move more current.
- distortionfield 3y ago
  One of the DFT papers suggested gold or silver for doping agents and, I’m no expert in the field but I feel like there’s a ton of room to explore the doping process of this material.

by klimt 3y ago

nemo44x 3y ago

My intuition tells me that the theory here will be more interesting than the current application, LK99. If it pans out then thousands of brilliant minds will iterate on the theory to expand it and to refine applications of it.

klimt 3y ago

The jump at 250K looks like bad contacts to me that fixed themselves during cooldown. Rewiring the sample and remeasuring should get rid of it. The field dependence is indeed a bit weird. One would expect the critical temperature to reduce with increasing magnetic field (magnetic field weakens superconductivity), but here you don't see that. It's expected that the superconductivity is very strong for such a high critical temperature and the fields applied are not strong enough, but with better measurements you should still see a small reduction in the critical temperature.

danpalmer 3y ago

> It basically confirms the existence of a new family of high-temperature superconductors, the first of its kind since the cuprates in 1986. Specifically, it seems, a family based on a novel superconductivity mechanism. If this a real effect, there's not only significant scope to improve LK-99 synthesis, but also scope to find new materials that could use the same mechanism that operate at even higher temperatures, are easier or cheaper to produce, or that can move more current.

distortionfield 3y ago
One of the DFT papers suggested gold or silver for doping agents and, I’m no expert in the field but I feel like there’s a ton of room to explore the doping process of this material.