Regular Pressure Room Temperature Superconductor is a World Changer if Mass Produced

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For the first time in the world, researchers (From Korea University, Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, Hyun-Tak Kim) have succeeded in synthesizing a room-temperature superconductor (Tc≥400 K, 127∘C) working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure. The superconductivity of LK-99 is proved with the Critical temperature (Tc), Zero-resistivity, Critical current (Ic), Critical magnetic field (Hc), and the Meissner effect. The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu2+ substitution of Pb2+(2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress. It concurrently transfers to Pb(1) of the cylindrical column resulting in distortion of the cylindrical column interface, which creates superconducting quantum wells (SQWs) in the interface. The heat capacity results indicated that the new model is suitable for explaining the superconductivity of LK-99. The unique structure of LK-99 that allows the minute distorted structure to be maintained in the interfaces is the most important factor that LK-99 maintains and exhibits superconductivity at room temperatures and ambient pressure.

NOTE: More charts of resistance is leaning towards this being a strong diamagnet and not a superconductor. The researchers were likely mistaken and not frauds.

PHD Chemist reviews the work in the Journal Science.

We’ve been getting excited over the years about superconducting materials that don’t even quite have to be cooled with liquid nitrogen, and this stuff is claimed to superconduct all the way up to room temperature and indeed up past the boiling point of water. Its critical temperature is said to be 127C (!) The phrase “boiling-water superconductor” is not one that I had ever used until yesterday.

Whether LK-99 itself becomes a big industrial material is open to question – one of the things you get from the characterization data is that LK-99 is not able to carry much current in its superconducting state at these high temperatures, and that’s a key property for many applications. That might not be surprising, either, because other superconductors generally carry less current density the higher the temperature gets (i.e., the closer to the critical temperature). But it has to be noted that this is indeed a polycrystalline material as synthesized, and that junctions between the different crystal domains can affect this profoundly. We also don’t have a feeling for how such a quantum-well superconductor behaves in general, if that’s how it works. If this is real, vast amounts of work will go into seeing if that current density can be increased by more careful synthesis and fabrication.

It’s a gigantic step to just show that such things can exist. That’s what will shake everyone up well before any applications come along, and if this reproduces, labs around the world will frantically start looking for quantum-well superconducting materials of their own. Who knows what could come out of that? Robust high-current-density room-temperature superconductors are right out of science fiction. Electrical generation and transmission, antennas, power storage, magnet applications (including things like fusion power plants), electric motors and basically everything that runs on electricity would be affected.

There have been near or possibly at room temperature superconductors that had to be put into a diamond vice to make the pressures. Those were not practical. This material can be made in 34 hours using basic lab equipment.

The recent success of developing room-temperature superconductors with hydrogen sulfide and yttrium super-hydride has great attention worldwide, which is expected by strong electron-phonon coupling theory with high-frequency hydrogen phonon modes. However, it is difficult to apply them to actual application devices in daily life because of the tremendously high pressure, and more efforts are being made to overcome the high-pressure problem.

The stress generated by the Cu2+ replacement of Pb(2)2+ ion was not relieved due to the structural uniqueness of LK-99 and at the same time was appropriately transferred to the interface of the cylindrical column. In other words, the Pb(1) atoms in the cylindrical column interface of LK-99 occupy a structurally limited space. These atoms are entirely affected by the stress and strain generated by Cu2+ ions. Therefore, SQWs can be generated in the interface by an appropriate amount of distortion(57) at room temperature and ambient pressure without a relaxation. From this point of view, the stress due to volume contraction by temperature and pressure is relieved and disappeared in CuO- and Fe-based superconductor systems because the relaxation process cannot be limited due to the structural freedom. Therefore, they need an appropriate temperature or pressure to limit the structural freedom and to achieve the SQW generation. The LK-99 is a very useful material for the study of superconductivity puzzles at room temperature.

All evidence and explanation lead that LK-99 is the first room-temperature and ambient-pressure superconductor. The LK-99 has many possibilities for various applications such as magnet, motor, cable, levitation train, power cable, qubit for a quantum computer, THz
Antennas, etc. The researchers believe that the new development will be a brand-new historical event that opens a new era for humankind.

41 thoughts on “Regular Pressure Room Temperature Superconductor is a World Changer if Mass Produced”

  1. Hopefully these results will be reproduced by multiple labs. Then comes the work to move from lab curiosity to producable product. Some commenters above have mentioned scintered or 3D printing. I also wonder if the material could be plated or applied to a substrate simply by dipping or washing the substrate with a molten bath of the material.

  2. ” More charts of resistance is leaning towards this being a strong diamagnet and not a superconductor.”

    I’m sorry, but if we see a resistance close to 0 on the Ohm meter using the DC polarity change method, how can it be interpreted other than superconducting?

  4. A mortar & pestle, vacuum, and furnace are not only easy to replicate, but also easy to scale industrially. The raw materials are pretty cheap, too. But the question is, how easy is it to shape into useful forms like wires and tapes, without it losing its useful properties? And how good are those properties for real-world applications? The lead is a concern as well.

    If it can be sintered – and it sounds like that’s what they’re doing – that also opens the gates for injection molding and 3D printing.

    But even it’s still not practical enough, if this is replicated, then at least it proves that it’s possible. This should bring forth a rush to find similar materials and improve on it.

  5. When Larry Niven wrote Ringworld, he needed a civilization with mastery of a technology that would give them the incredible powers required to create the Ringworld. Although many technologies would have been necessary, of course, the one that really propelled that race into the big leagues was one so powerful even the humans 800 hundred years in our future did not yet have it: room temperature superconductors.

    In point of fact, when an organism came along that consumed this superconductor’s material, the civilization fell (right along with its floating cities).

    What a marvel that we might have it while even in Larry Niven’s lifetime, and not from some hyper-advanced alien race.

    • Been a while since you read Ringworld, and the rest of the “Known Universe” stories, hasn’t it? They absolutely had room temperature superconductors at that point. The big game changing technologies in Ringworld were ultra-strong materials like skrith. And some crazy mass production techniques that allowed them to take apart whole planets for construction material.

      • I’m deeply troubled that you could mention skrith off the top of your head and that I know what you are talking about.

      • The room temp superconductors that were part of Louis Wu’s regular tools even mattered in some problem solving plot points as I recall. He’s right though that was the cause of the fall of the Ringworld engineers civilization some invasive mold that destroyed their RT Superconductors.

        • as far as i remember, one of the plots was that a superconducting wire was also super at heat transfer, so you could put one end in a lake and fry the other and the temperature would be the same on both ends.

      • Actually, the Ringworld civilization was deliberately destroyed by the Puppeteers when they perceived it as potential threat on their migration route. They destroyed it by seeding it with an engineered plague that attacked and destroyed the superconductor material. The entire Ringworld, an area 3 billion times the land area of Earth, was so dependent on the stuff that they were unable to adapt quickly enough to avoid falling back to barbarism (and losing their Protectors).

        I pretty much reread everything in Niven’s Know Space collection every decade or so. I own an autographed first edition (the one with the mistakes). When I presented it to him with a pen he grimaced and did NOT want to sign it but eventually was a good sport about it.

        At some point in one of the books, Louis actually muses to himself that, while things like scrith (probably a modified form of Protector twing) were essential in creating the Ringworld, it was the room temperature superconductors that allowed them the wealth and power to even attempt to build it.

        • 3 billion Earths surface area?

          As far as I remember it was ONLY 3 million Earths in surface area!

          LAME.

          • Yeah, I’d read several Dyson sphere stories recently, for which that figure is correct. But all the same, right back atcha. That was a pretty lame way to make a correction.

      • Oh, and it was the Puppeteers that knew how to make room temperature superconductors. Nessus admitted they had five different means of doing that, but these had not been shared with (sold) to other races. They wanted the human race to be strong (we made excellent trading partners and we were useful for putting the kibosh on other belligerent races) but they did not want us too strong.

        Of course, the Outsiders probably knew more about superconductors than even the Puppeteers could ever dream of knowing. Unfortunately, while everything the Outsiders knew was for sale, the prices were . . . prohibitive.

  6. Room temperature superconductors have always been a “hype”. I will believe it when its for sale.

  7. We have spent decades removing both Lead and Mercury from the environment. I am not eager to reintroduce them back into the environment.

    • Oh riddle me this Batman… when we removed lead from “the environment”, where did we put it? Did we launch it in to space?

      Also have you heard the of the “lead-acid battery”? Lead is used in many places, just not plumbing and paint (to name a few).

      • just not in NEW plumbing and paints. One of the primary schools in our *hood has too high lead content in the water and they had to close the drinking taps and fountains there

  8. High voltage transmission is likely one of the last uses. Line losses aren’t actually that big of a deal and increasing current on a line is of limited value because substation equipment is also limited.

    In this industry the biggest questions are how long it will last, how do I repair storm damage, are there any limitations on where I can use it

    • The critical field is rather low, unfortunately. This seems to be a trend in higher temperature superconductors.

      The best thing here is that the recipe for making this is pretty simple, so we should know within days if people can replicate the results.

      As for applications… When the first LN superconductors came out, one of the easy ways to demonstrate superconductivity was to hold a magnet near a pellet of the ceramic while cooling it below its critical temperature. Once it was chilled, you could move the magnet around, and the pellet would follow it in mid air, as a result of flux tubes being pinned inside the superconductor.

      So, an obvious application for a room temperature superconductor would be short range passive magnetic levitation of the sort you can’t pull off without superconductors due to the Earshaw’s theorem. Most of the uses would be sort of silly, I suppose; It would be great for toys. Maybe I should work up a patent or two for applications like that…

      • The best thing is that it leads researches down a new path and we continue to improve. Having a room temperature ambient pressure superconductor is like breaking the 4 minute mile barrier. Once the barrier is broken it only gets better.

        • Like the 4 minute mile, don’t expect it to lead to a 3 minute mile. Superconductivity is a delicate condition in ordinary matter, which is why it’s fairly common at cryogenic temperatures, and gets rapidly more difficult to achieve as temperatures go up.

          If this is real, superconductivity over the boiling point, the real gain is to achieve it in a material that isn’t brittle, hygroscopic, pyrolytic, and so forth. Something that makes a convenient wire that you can join to another wire without compromising the superconductivity.

      • “The critical field is rather low, unfortunately. This seems to be a trend in higher temperature superconductors.”

        That sounds like a massive drawback, depending on the criteria for “rather low”. It sounds like a lot of the applications for a high temperature (moderate pressure) superconductor involve it’s potential use in magnets.

        • It still allows you to use it for carrying electricity without resistance, and there are maglev applications where it’s not so much the field strength as the perfect feedback you get from zero resistance. And you can typically increase the critical field by cooling.

  9. This will likely be a Big Story like Cold Fusion was, breaking out in all sorts of media that never cover technology stories. Hopefully it has better legs. Like any fundamental science based tech story – it’s got a better shot at wide revolutionary application now with AI teasing the Singularity. AI will help with brute force exploration of the effect and other ways of achieving it, tweaking materials, manufacturing methods, etc. Seems possible it will be quickly replicated as Science.

    • Spoken like someone who doesn’t understand or do science. This is clear terrible science with poor methodology and understanding of superconductivity. There is no where this hype is going.

  10. “For the first time in the world, researchers (From Korea University) have succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor (Tc≥400 K, 127∘C) working at ambient pressure…”

    Joe Eck would like a word with you. 😉

  12. While I would have preferred a substance other than lead, I’ll certainly take it as a win. It will require more expense at the end of life stage for any equipment using it (especially if it is going to be used for transmission which will require a lot of material) but it would be worth it.

    Maybe the knowledge about how this functions will lead to other substances that don’t require lead.

      • 😊
        I’m thinking more of abandoned equipment leaching lead out of theoretically well run reclamation sites that turn out to be just junkyards when budgets get cut. “We were told the contractor was recycling the stuff so I’m sorry that they just dumped it in the woods over your well water. You should talk to them about it—if they are still in business today.” I’m guessing that since it isn’t pure lead metal it would actually be easier to leach into water than for chunks of metal.

        My main concern though is that while it may work at high temperatures and normal pressures, is it really fragile? Is it practical for real world use?

    • That was my first thought. I’m not saying lead isn’t toxic, but the acceptable exposure is commonly, erroneously, considered to be zero. So I do foresee massive resistance to adoption of the technology.

      • On my wish list for human genetic improvements: Better handling of heavy metals. So many nice technological applications and materials have gotten shelved just because people don’t deal well with heavy metals.

        • That would definitely be on my list, too. Longer term goal would be chromosomes big enough that no random jot of radiation is going to mess them up. The time is rapidly coming when no one and no thing should be altering our genome without our approval anymore.

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