Derek Lowe in the Journal Science is guardedly optimistic at this point. The Shenyang and Lawrence Berkeley calculations are very positive developments. This is by far the most believable shot at room-temperature-and-pressure superconductivity the world has seen so far, and the coming days and weeks are going to be extremely damned interesting.
The Fermi level is the theoretical energy for an electron in a solid material where it would have a 50% chance of occupying that energy level at any given time – sort of the “natural home” for mobile conducting electrons in a given material. Electrons in solids are modeled as occupying a series of “bands” of different energies, separated by band gaps. If a material is an insulator, that means that its Fermi level is sitting inside a wide band gap, and its electrons will not be able to give you any current. Metals, on the other hand, have one or more bands that land at the Fermi level (in semiconductors, in case you’re wondering, the Fermi level sort of “grazes” the bands, close enough to where thermal energy can move some electrons into them).
The Shenyang group has very similar conclusions (as they should; both they and Griffin are using the same DFT software package!) The starting lead apatite is a very good insulator, but the structural changes on bringing in the copper atom both match the experimental data from the Korean preprints and lead to a very large shift to a metallic state. They find a half-filled flat band and a fully-occupied flat band around the Fermi level, and agree that these are crucial to investigate for the reported superconductivity. They also predict that substituting gold atoms into the Pb(1) site could lead to a material with very similar properties, which will be an extremely interesting idea to put to the test.
If you could grow a good single crystal of LK-99, it seems as if the superconductivity might only occur along one crystal axis: put crudely, you’d see superconductivity if you hooked your wires to two particular opposite faces of said crystal, but not to the others! Crystalline grain boundaries are already known to be a big deal in the efficiency of existing superconducting materials, and this would mean that polycrystalline samples of LK-99 would be pretty unfavorable to demonstrating robust effects.
These theoretical and experimental developments have been covered here at Nextbigfuture.com.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Iris_igb Twitter handle.
As smart as she is she doesn’t realize she’s the stereotypical eastern european ranting about what’s fair and what’s not – I was married to that stereotype for a decade.
Still, some smart people over there, and in my opinion we shouldn’t be assisting the slaughter in that theater. I’m the hippie the boomers quit being when the got rich in the ’80s.
Eastern Europe is the cradle of civilization. I’m glad that the only thing that makes you exceptional, not civilizational progress, is the economic well-being of the West that arose from a political agreement.
Regarding the 1D aspects, someone mentioned looking at the crystal structure from one aspect, it resembles a wire with a sheath, where the “sheath” is doing the pull tension on the “wire” core allowing it to potentially go superconductive.
That ruzzian girl should be in a mental asylum!
For your enjoyment, a little bit of room temperature Meissner effect:
https://twitter.com/VasutTomas0423/status/1686423440214118400?s=20
Looks like a lock. Thanks for sharing.
I’m happy for all the young people beginning their career who will study and refine this and figure out how to use it for benefit and profit.
Yep, Russian girl a head case. Nice to see god level intellect occasionally. I wish her luck….
Brian, does showing the Russian soil scientist’s pictures with the grain in the pipette mean that she wasn’t a scam?
She sure seemed to have strong opinions about the way to perform the reactions – had me convinced personally, tho baking soda and vinegar is all I know about chemistry anymore.
She seems too anti-commerce to be working a scam. She is getting no benefit from it as a scam. She also seems anti-social in many ways.
The amount of effort to fake in that short a time does not align with what she did. NOTE: she specifically blocked me no twitter, because my profile had a blue checkmark and I had some pro-venture capital and business descriptions in my profile. She will get monetization and benefit from this only if it is forced upon her.
I was asked by atomstroyexpert if Iris Alexander, Russian soil scientist was running a scam or a fraud. I replied that I do not think she is. I think her work is legitimate.
She synthesized it (or at least precursors) in her school lab before anybody else. She claims to have identified the reactions driving the formation of the mineral and claims the high vacuum and long ramped bakes weren’t crucial. She inerted with helium and cooked stuff in a flask like breaking bad.
Then she started ranting about soviet/capitalist rivalries and how stupid most others are compared to a basic Ruskie or something.