New superconducting materials have just been discovered

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In 2024, superconductivity – the flow of electric current with zero resistance – was discovered in three distinct materials. Two examples extend the textbook understanding of the phenomenon. The third rips it off completely. “This is a very unusual form of superconductivity that many people said was not possible,” said Ashwin VishwanathA physicist at Harvard University who was not involved in the discovery.

Superconductivity has fascinated physicists since 1911, when Dutch scientist Heike Kamerling Ones first observed the disappearance of electrical resistance. There is pure mystery in how this happens: the coupling event requires electrons, which carry the electric current. Electrons repel each other, so how can they come together?

Then there are the technological promises: already, superconductivity has enabled the development of MRI machines and powerful particle colliders. If physicists could fully understand how and when the phenomenon occurs, perhaps they could engineer a wire that superconducts electricity in everyday conditions rather than only at low temperatures, as is the case today. World-changing technologies—lossless power grids, magnetically levitating vehicles—could follow.

Recent discoveries have further complicated the mystery of superconductivity and fueled optimism. “It seems that, in materials, superconductivity is everywhere,” said Matthew YankowitzA physicist at the University of Washington.

The discoveries stem from a recent revolution in materials science: three new examples of superconductivity in devices assembled from flat sheets of atoms. These materials exhibit unprecedented flexibility; At the touch of a button, physicists can switch between conducting, insulating, and more exotic behaviors—a modern form of alchemy that supercharged the search for superconductivity.

It now increasingly seems that several factors can give rise to the phenomenon. Just as birds, bees and dragonflies fly using different wing structures, materials seem to combine electrons in different ways. Even as researchers debate exactly what’s going on in the various two-dimensional materials in question, they anticipate that the growing zoo of superconductors will help them achieve a more universal view of the elusive phenomenon.

Pairing electrons

Observations of Kämmerling Ones (and superconductivity seen in other very cold metals) finally led to the discovery of cracks in 1957. John Burdeen, Leon Cooper and John Robert Schriefer. take out At that low temperature, a material’s shiny atomic lattice cools down, so more subtle effects occur. The electrons gently tug on the protons in the lattice, drawing them inward to create an additional positive charge. That distortion, known as a phonon, can then draw in a second electron, forming a “Cooper pair”. Cooper pairs can all combine into a coherent quantum entity in a way that single selection cannot. The resulting quantum soup slides frictionlessly between the material’s atoms, which would normally prevent electric current.

Bardin, Cooper and Schriefer’s theory of phonon-based superconductivity won them the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics. But that’s not the whole story. In the 1980s, physicists found that copper-filled crystals called cuprates could be superconducting at high temperatures, where atomic jiggles could wash out phonons. Other similar examples have followed.