Korean SCT Lab Paper Partially Describes How to Make Potential Room Temperature Superconductor Pb-Cu-P-S-O

SCT Lab published a paper on how they make the Pb-Cu-P-S-O compound that has some pieces with potential room temperature superconductivity. The description of the process to make it is partial. How they get the powders is not described. They did not give mass ratios (cited intellectual property). The testing process for zero resistivity did not appear to be conclusive. The process still results in success only part of the time. They only want the metal phase material and it seems that the metal phase is also not pure with the superconducting phase.

* There is no structural characterization (XRD, SEM, etc.), magnetization or other supporting data
* The presented level of analysis is very crude

Here is the video of the SCT Lab process.

Here is link to the google sheet with raw SCT Lab measurement data.

There is still a lot of work to be done to make this reliable, better and useful. However, this is reporting from the group in Korea who are working on replication. Last summer, there will dozens of amateurs working on replication of LK99. This work is more formal than the reporting from those groups last year.

Prof. Hyun-Tak Kim supervised all of this research. Hyun-Tak Kim is the lead of the original team of LK99 researchers. The claim of replication seems to have a problem if the lead researcher on the first team is supervising the second team.

The Chinese universities and labs working on replication and having interesting magnetic are quite independent,

Synthesis of the Pb-Cu-P-S-O compound

The synthesis process is as follows: powders of Pb, Cu, P, and S are placed into a ceramic crucible. Oxygen can be absorbed in the air atmosphere. An oxygen cutter is used for this synthesis method, with a mixture of LPG gas and oxygen set at a 1:1 ratio. Due to the influence of surrounding temperature and pressure conditions during synthesis, significant variations in the synthesized product exist depending on the heating time. However, generally, the heating process can be done within the range of 2000 to 3000°C for approximately 0 to 10 minutes. The resultant material is quenched in water, aiming for a metallic appearance with a copper-colored surface and a silver-colored interior.

In general, the resulting products are either a ceramic or a combination of ceramic and metal phases, or a single crystal with a CuS peak in XRD data as a characteristic of PCPOSOS. When breaking the ceramic, only the metal part contained inside should be collected. Magnetic properties can be investigated for those metal parts. If carbon is introduced during the synthesis process, black-colored ceramic occurs. It is important to minimize carbon involvement during the process.

If the electrical resistance of the metallic resultant is higher or its diamagnetic characteristics are weaker than that of the same-sized copper, the heat treatment process can be repeated. Repeating the synthesis process may enhance the diamagnetic characteristics of the samples. This repetition of heat treatment can involve reheating a single sample or reheating multiple samples for synthesis. Due to the intellectual propriety issue, the detailed mass ratio of each component. One important thing is, S and P must be added in greater mass ratio than Cu because of evaporation.

They release a video of the synthesis process online. [See above for the video]

Powder information will be addressed in our future work. The appearance of the heat treatment in the synthesis process.

Conclusion
In summary, in order to resolve an emerging problem in the field of the RT superconductor, we developed a synthesis method of the Pb-Cu-P-S-O compound similar to possible RT superconductor, PCPOSOS, and measured the potential zero resistances (noises) regarded as the superconducting condensed state. These technologies can be applied to applications of RT superconductors. Despite measuring equipment limitations, our findings suggest promising avenues for further investigation.

We will release the raw data included in the paper online. [There is some raw data linked.

Future research will focus on overcoming these limitations and exploring the compound’s behavior under higher currents. We will release our research content to include results such as temperature dependence, ZFC-FC, and M vs H measurements soon.