The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor has been found

[StDragon]

39 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

As long as it's not another palladium cold fusion fool's gold rush that distract from proper research, its fine.

That was my thought too, another Pons-Fleischmann moment.

 

Until there's independent testing, it's still BS and vaporware.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

Certainly fascinating, and if it can be repeated and the properties are right this could be game changing. Pretty sure for most applications the lead content won't be an issue, at least not a big enough one to prevent widespread adoption. For things like magnets we will need to see what the critical field and current densities are and whether the conductivity is isotropic etc.

 

Given how long it has been until high-temperature superconductors really started to show up in applications, I don't see this becoming usable tech any time soon. Plus from what I have read the response from the scientific community is highly skeptical.

[CarlBar]

7 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Certainly fascinating, and if it can be repeated and the properties are right this could be game changing. Pretty sure for most applications the lead content won't be an issue, at least not a big enough one to prevent widespread adoption. For things like magnets we will need to see what the critical field and current densities are and whether the conductivity is isotropic etc.

 

Given how long it has been until high-temperature superconductors really started to show up in applications, I don't see this becoming usable tech any time soon. Plus from what I have read the response from the scientific community is highly skeptical.

 

The reported current densities at room temperature are fairly poor apparently. And yes lots of scepticism out there, been too many falsified papers of this nature over the years.

 

That said the main reason high temperature superconductors have been slow to get into commercial applications is mainly how much of a massive pain they are  to manufacture, this seems oddly simple, if it holds for longer runs or w/e it would be vastly easier to implement at scale in a commercial environment than existing high temperature superconductors. 

[Aluminumhaste]

All of this screams "too good to be true".

[CarlBar]

12 minutes ago, Aluminumhaste said:

All of this screams "too good to be true".

 

I largely agree, though apparently there's video of them doing the "floating above a magnet" thing with a sample of it, looks like it might be trickier to make on scale now i've seen that as it's clearly not superconductive throughout as one corner is touching the magnet, but the rest is levitating and there's no sign of cold air coming off the sample. Could still be faked any number of ways, but it's better than what the previous fakes have shown off AFAIK. But there's also some doubts about some of their data sets.

 

TLDR, messy.

 

Video link: https://sciencecast.org/casts/suc384jly50n

[bcredeur97]

what are some examples of things people have done or thought of that would require superconductivity at normal temps? 

Just trying to actually realize what this can be used for if it's real lol

[StDragon]

12 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

looks like it might be trickier to make on scale now i've seen that as it's clearly not superconductive throughout as one corner is touching the magnet, but the rest is levitating and there's no sign of cold air coming off the sample.

The biggest red flag is them having so long to develop this, yet not a single deliverable to market.

 

You don't need perfect room temp Superconductivity to have viable utility. Even if it was a sub-optimal solution, the energy savings and reduction of existing cryogenic cooling would be immense. Such a product would instantly put money in the coffers to fund additional R&D.

[CarlBar]

21 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

what are some examples of things people have done or thought of that would require superconductivity at normal temps? 

Just trying to actually realize what this can be used for if it's real lol

 

Does it use electricity? Then it's an application. Superconductivity isn't just about weird stuff you can only do with superconductors. It's also about being a nearly zero resistance material. That dramatically raises the efficiency possibble. Typically somwhere between 8-15%, (depending on a lot of factors), of the power generated by the powerplants is lost before it reaches you, and even more once it starts being used in your home.

 

As a sort of rough example assume everything you own that uses electricity starts costing 25% less to run.

[CarlBar]

22 minutes ago, StDragon said:

The biggest red flag is them having so long to develop this, yet not a single deliverable to market.

 

You don't need perfect room temp Superconductivity to have viable utility. Even if it was a sub-optimal solution, the energy savings and reduction of existing cryogenic cooling would be immense. Such a product would instantly put money in the coffers to fund additional R&D.

 

I don't know much about the research group, but my impression is this is something they've just got to the point of going "we think we've got somthing, take a look". I believe they're an academic research group, not an industrial one, so advancing the science by discovering new things is the primary goal, not monetising what they find. Thats for someone else to do.

[bcredeur97]

8 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Does it use electricity? Then it's an application. Superconductivity isn't just about weird stuff you can only do with superconductors. It's also about being a nearly zero resistance material. That dramatically raises the efficiency possibble. Typically somwhere between 8-15%, (depending on a lot of factors), of the power generated by the powerplants is lost before it reaches you, and even more once it starts being used in your home.

 

As a sort of rough example assume everything you own that uses electricity starts costing 25% less to run.

Yeah sorry for the dumb question, but yeah... thats a huge deal! wow

[CarlBar]

50 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

Yeah sorry for the dumb question, but yeah... thats a huge deal! wow

 

Nah it's fine. Don't worry about it. :).

 

Also those same savings and maybe more would apply to any electrically run equipment in factories making the stuff you consume. For things where the electricity usage in manufacturing is the largest cost factor thats a major cheapening of your cost to buy. It's really hard to overstate just how big of a deal it would be for cost of living.

 

Then you get into freaky stuff you could do with it and it's a whole other ballgame.

[LAwLz]

I'll believe it when I see it.

It's not that uncommon for someone to think they have discovered a breakthrough, only to realize their measurements were wrong, or that they overlooked something. I really hope it is true, but I won't be holding my breath.

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I'll believe it when I see it.

It's not that uncommon for someone to think they have discovered a breakthrough, only to realize their measurements were wrong, or that they overlooked something. I really hope it is true, but I won't be holding my breath.

 

Yeah, or for it to be super weird scaling things, or (especially in chemistry), low level contamination in either the working implements or the starting materials that result in it working a bit different than you thought, (and this assumes this paper isn't another YBCO example where the pre-print included a deliberate error in the procedure to make it impossible to replicate before they could do a full fancy presentation on it).

 

I think one of the comments i saw at "In the Pipeline" sums up my thoughts:

 

Quote

Well I'm betting against it being real.

This is on the XKCD basis that if it is real, I will be much too excited to care about having lost the bet.

 

[Stahlmann]

If fusion reactors are anything to go by we're probably looking at decades of reasearch before the first real produts using this technology will come out. And a few more decades before it hits consumer products. (If they can even find a use case for it that is)

[CarlBar]

8 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

If fusion reactors are anything to go by we're probably looking at decades of research before the first real products using this technology will come out. And a few more decades before it hits consumer products. (If they can even find a use case for it that is)

 

I allready went over the potentiol use cases a few posts up, (TLDR anything using electricity). The potentiol uses are just huge.

 

If true how long it takes is entirely a matter of how well the production process scales. Current commonly used superconductors are really finky to produce which makes them difficult to use en mass even in places where the liquid nitrogen cooling isn't an issue. But this may not have that issue, it's hard to tell. There are use cases where it's apparent low current carrying capacity would be an issue, (any super magnet for example), but it's not a deal breaker in a lot of applications AFAIK.

[Forbidden Wafer]

I pity the fool... 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

9 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

If fusion reactors are anything to go by we're probably looking at decades of reasearch before the first real produts using this technology will come out. And a few more decades before it hits consumer products. (If they can even find a use case for it that is)

Oddly enough, fusion reactors could be one of the first use cases for this.

 

One of the limiting factors in fusion technology as I understand it is the plasma pressure, or more correctly the magnetic pressure that can be build up by the superconducting magnets. The higher this is, the smaller the chamber can be and thus the whole thing becomes smaller, more efficient etc. Hence why ITER is damn big, because they designed it with regular low-temperature superconductors in mind, which have limits on the magnetic field they can create.

 

High-temperature have much higher critical fields and current densities, and provided the trend would hold for a RT superconductor, then this material could be even better. Heck, even if you had to cool it to LN2 temps it would still be amazing, provided you can make friggin' wire out of it.

 

High-temperature superconductors are now making their first appearance in commercial products (if you can call high-end scientific equipment that), but it took a long time to figure out how to make them into "wires". The solution is to have super-thin, single crystals grown on metallic tape that is both flexible and still provides the required properties. However, this did not address the next question: how do you connect two of them? So there is still the need for something like superconducting solder, or very precise bonding techniques. But, these things have now been solved (more or less) so there's hope we could use this for the new material as well. Even better would be if you could just use it as a filler in regular wires instead though.

 

But they will definitely make an appearance in things like MRI machines, particle accelerators, and if they are cheap enough: power lines, motors, generators...

[CarlBar]

@GarlicDeliverySystem mentioned this a couple of times but at room temperature at least this stuff has been displaying fairly low peak current capabilities. That said this is also a very rough early sample, so if it is real there may be room for improvement with better fabrication..

 

But otherwise spot on.

 

Apparently someone on twitch is attempting to replicate the work, for whatever reason there's only the clips from the stream, not the video they were clipped from so i can't verify the claim as they're offline atm, but apparently they're at the slow 72 hour cook stage of things as of 18 hours ago when the clips where taken. Apply salt as i can't verify the claim that this person is trying to replicate this paper, (or that they're following the procedure properly), but will still link in case it's legit:

 

https://www.twitch.tv/andrewmccalip

[Beskamir]

I'm just going to dump this here:

Good luck making wires out of a ceramic!

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

2 hours ago, Beskamir said:

Good luck making wires out of a ceramic!

They have:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_wire

https://www.fujikura.co.uk/products/fel2ghts_high-temperature-superconductors

https://www.bruker.com/zh/products-and-solutions/superconductors/superconductors/ybco-2g-hts-superconductor.html

https://www.bruker.com/en/products-and-solutions/superconductors/superconductors.html

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fusion-2662267312

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359028607000344

 

The point stands though, having the material is one thing. Making a "wire" out of it and scaling up production are the difficult ones. As you can see from some of the links HTS wires/tapes are now becoming available on a commercial scale, but don't think it is a commodity. It just means someone is willing to make it for you, but the quantities are low and costs per meter are still incredible.

I remember reading somewhere that commonwealth fusion systems got into the supercon production business, simply because their estimated needs exceeded commercial world production capacity. Bruker is now offering supercon magnets with hybrid LTS/HTS coils, and I think other manufacturers of magnets/MRI machines might follow soon.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

On 7/26/2023 at 9:01 PM, HenrySalayne said:

This is quite interesting, but I see two problems:

- Lead is banned under the RoHS directive, so a lead-based superconductor might be a problem.

- The time between creating something in a lab and solving the technical issues to deploy and use it in everyday applications can be easily two decades.

On 7/27/2023 at 3:53 AM, StDragon said:

And for good reason; lead is toxic at any level. There is no safe amount. Also the absorption of lead is cumulative over one's lifetime.

 

That said however, it's found everywhere from spent bullets at the range or hunting to wheel balancing weights.

 

So the application of lead "depends". But I agree it should remain banned. It's not worth mass application of this material.

On 7/27/2023 at 5:26 AM, leadeater said:

Lead is as safe to use as you try to be safe with it i.e. lead paint = no attempt to be safe. I wouldn't say all lead usage is unsafe but I wouldn't say all lead usage is safe either.

Let me just say, RoHS isn't nearly as strict as you guys think it is. There's a whole list of exemptions to the RoHS directive: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/rohs-directive/implementation-rohs-directive_en And you can still apply for new exemptions if you have a valid reason. For example, the ban on mercury will only come into effect in the coming months (that's why there's a sudden rush for LED fluorescent lighting replacements). But, of the top of my head, you're still allowed to use lead for the following:

• Solder in aerospace (to inhibit dendrite formation in low pressure environments)
• Solder in military applications (due to lesser embrittlement of the joint)
• Solder for servers, NAS, routers, ... for professional use
• Solder for fluorescent tubes (for the coming days while they're still legal)
• Solder for PLCs in an industrial setting
• Pretty much anything regarding medical devices
• Flip-chip solder balls on dies larger than 300 mm² (aka AMD and Intel could still use lead if they really wanted to)
• Optical glass compositions
• For high voltage ceramic components
• PZT piezoelectrics
• As solder and contact plating for electronic test equipment
• ...

Heck, you're still allowed to use alodine (which is big on that entire hexavalent chromium thing that's massively carcinogenic) in a lot of industries until July 2024, and the aerospace industry can keep using it beyond that deadline even. But to get to the actual topic at hand, there's a specific exemption for lead in superconductors for MRI scanners with no expiration date: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32011L0065

11. Lead in alloys as a superconductor and thermal conductor in MRI.
12. Lead and cadmium in metallic bonds to superconducting materials in MRI and SQUID detectors.

 

That being said, having worked at Korean universities, this is quite typical for Korean research institutes: some unknown professor makes huge claims based on shoddy evidence to raise their status. When others can't replicate the results it's because "Koreans are better at lab work" or "Western science doesn't account for everything", etc. If anyone non-Korean criticizes it, they'll encounter a wave of angry Korean nationalists, even if everyone proves the science is shoddy. Meanwhile, said professor will then get glorified by the local media trying to make a quick buck of said nationalism. The professor in question will then receive a lot of research funding, and if they keep their mouth shut they have a cosy career ahead of them. But it's rare for this type of exploit to get picked up by international media, so it'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

 

As far as the science goes, could potentially work but I doubt it. My money is on either intentional fake or failure to understand what they're actually doing/measuring.

[CarlBar]

3 hours ago, Beskamir said:

I'm just going to dump this here:

Good luck making wires out of a ceramic!

 

Give me 13 minutes of my life back please. He just repeats "scientists make big claim, other scientists sceptical and awaiting replication" 20 different ways for most of it. Not a single useful comment made by him in the entire video. His attempted bustign at the end may or may not be good. I honestly can't tell because the angle is so bad. But that doesn't invalidate the research like the thinks. Even if his experiment shows what he says it shows. A single phenomenon can have multiple possibble explanations depending on the details. So his experiment and theirs can both be valid.

 

Like i said i think it's probably wrong. But at this point unless you've gone out and replicated their work and found it doesn't work you shouldn't be making any definitive statements, and even then wait to see if the same holds true for everyone else that tries to replicate. No procedure can be 100% replicated by 100% of groups that try to. And as others attempting to replicate it have noted, there's some unknowns to their procedure that haven't been specified in sufficient detail to be sure their replication attempt is doing exactly what they did. Which is sadly common in research papers these days.

 

40 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

They have:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_wire

https://www.fujikura.co.uk/products/fel2ghts_high-temperature-superconductors

https://www.bruker.com/zh/products-and-solutions/superconductors/superconductors/ybco-2g-hts-superconductor.html

https://www.bruker.com/en/products-and-solutions/superconductors/superconductors.html

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fusion-2662267312

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359028607000344

 

The point stands though, having the material is one thing. Making a "wire" out of it and scaling up production are the difficult ones. As you can see from some of the links HTS wires/tapes are now becoming available on a commercial scale, but don't think it is a commodity. It just means someone is willing to make it for you, but the quantities are low and costs per meter are still incredible.

I remember reading somewhere that commonwealth fusion systems got into the supercon production business, simply because their estimated needs exceeded commercial world production capacity. Bruker is now offering supercon magnets with hybrid LTS/HTS coils, and I think other manufacturers of magnets/MRI machines might follow soon.

 

That claim comes from Thunderf00t, i've seen him make a whole bunch of confidently wrong assumptions in the past, (notably about the physics side of the Hyperloop concept). He's clearly relatively knowledgeable in some areas, but you have to understand how something applies in the real world in a variety of applications to even begin to make such broad claims, and even then you have to remember you might be wrong. it's why i allways try to phrase things that i'm not just repeating from elsewhere as a IMO thing. I can make some broad judgment calls on stuff, but thats not the same as being 100% right 100% of the time.

 

2 minutes ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

That being said, having worked at Korean universities, this is quite typical for Korean research institutes: some unknown professor makes huge claims based on shoddy evidence to raise their status. When others can't replicate the results it's because "Koreans are better at lab work" or "Western science doesn't account for everything", etc. If anyone non-Korean criticizes it, they'll encounter a wave of angry Korean nationalists, even if everyone proves the science is shoddy. Meanwhile, said professor will then get glorified by the local media trying to make a quick buck of said nationalism. The professor in question will then receive a lot of research funding, and if they keep their mouth shut they have a cosy career ahead of them. But it's rare for this type of exploit to get picked up by international media, so it'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

 

As far as the science goes, could potentially work but I doubt it. My money is on either intentional fake or failure to understand what they're actually doing/measuring.

 

Based on some events that have transpired around the papers it appears one member of the group published without the permission of the rest of the team. The rest of the team then released their not entirely complete paper in response to this and have apparently booted the other person off the group in response.

 

The hot take i've been seeing in science articles and websites is everyone on the team buys the results, and the publishing mess, (and consequently not quite complete research before publishing), is down to an internal fight over the potentiol Noble Prize.

 

No idea how that fits in with your experiance of Korean Universities, but sounds very different from one individual over hyping a result.

[leadeater]

25 minutes ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

Let me just say, RoHS isn't nearly as strict as you guys think it is. There's a whole list of exemptions to the RoHS

Well I'm not actually saying it's strict and for that matter you don't actually have to be RoHS compliant at all, you do if you want to have the mark to indicate that you are, basically the point. But overall Lead usage is as safe as it's outset to be used safely is based on known risks e.g. eating it is not a good idea 

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

15 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

That claim comes from Thunderf00t, i've seen him make a whole bunch of confidently wrong assumptions in the past, (notably about the physics side of the Hyperloop concept). He's clearly relatively knowledgeable in some areas, but you have to understand how something applies in the real world in a variety of applications to even begin to make such broad claims, and even then you have to remember you might be wrong. it's why i allways try to phrase things that i'm not just repeating from elsewhere as a IMO thing. I can make some broad judgment calls on stuff, but thats not the same as being 100% right 100% of the time.

Thunderf00t is a typical example of a physicist, I have to deal with folks like that at work on a daily basis and they're quite exhausting... They argue about everything from a theoretical framework and they don't necessarily understand what engineering actually entails. This frequently leads to idiotic statements like Freeman Dyson's "A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering." 

 

I recently had one claim to me that you couldn't send a high bandwidth signal for more than a hundred meters on a single twisted pair, and I had to point out dial-up, ISDN, ADSL, ethernet, ... exist, at which point he just kept resorting to abstract concepts and repeating himself. As an interesting bonus, he was just using the volume resistivity of copper and failing to account for the skin effect - which made the actual transmission line characteristics at the operating frequency far worse. Needless to say, we're using twisted pair copper cables and his concerns were kindly buried under a layer of adaptive modulation schemes. For added fun, I'm now also transmitting power over said pair and using the cheapest and crappiest SMPS you can find for it, the amount of noise it blasts out is hilarious. Meanwhile, his proposed solution was to go wireless in the 2.4 GHz band, which most definitely never leads to issues...

 

23 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

Based on some events that have transpired around the papers it appears one member of the group published without the permission of the rest of the team. The rest of the team then released their not entirely complete paper in response to this and have apparently booted the other person off the group in response.

 

The hot take i've been seeing in science articles and websites is everyone on the team buys the results, and the publishing mess, (and consequently not quite complete research before publishing), is down to an internal fight over the potentiol Noble Prize.

 

No idea how that fits in with your experiance of Korean Universities, but sounds very different from one individual over hyping a result.

Them believing in it doesn't really mean much to me, I saw people believe their own bullshit results all the time at any university - and I'm sure I fell for it a few times as well during my career in academia. Tunnel vision is very much a thing, and that's why talking to your colleagues and getting input is so important.

 

But there are a few oddities, the author list order especially. But my gut feeling tells me this is also normally the thing that you would send to the likes of Nature or Science and that would get fast-tracked, but the paper structure and figure quality would suggest otherwise. The materials and methods section is also a bit odd to me, the electrical measurement smells a bit iffy, etc. My thoughts on it at the moment are: great if it's true, but it probably isn't.

 

27 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well I'm not actually saying it's strict and for that matter you don't actually have to be RoHS compliant at all, you do if you want to have the mark to indicate that you are, basically the point. But overall Lead usage is as safe as it's outset to be used safely is based on known risks.

RoHS compliance is part of CE compliance, which you require to sell on the European market though. 

 

22 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

No, it is exactly as strict as I think it is.

Lead has almost been extinct* from consumer electronics. It's not about "this will not be used" it's about "will we see proliferation of lead based superconductors in commodity electronics?" and I highly doubt it.

You seem to think it's pretty strict, but RoHS ain't a blanket ban on heavy metals, it's actually quite reasonable as far as legislation goes. As a result, you'd be quite surprised in how many components it's still used. For example, if you have something with piezoelectrics in it (e.g. camera auto-focus and movement compensation systems) you'll often find PZT, which keeps getting its exemption because there's no real substitute at the moment, see one of the last exemption request: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1545362346506&uri=PI_COM:C(2018)7509 Yet, you'll still happily find the RoHS symbol on those devices. It's also frequently used in ceramic parts for specific high voltage components, and we still add a dash of lead to the solder for particular applications due to the mechanical and chemical properties gained by alloying. Unleaded solder tends to be quite brittle, leeches the copper out of circuit boards - which can cause voids underneath the nickel plating on contacts in some instances, and has quite bad dendrite formation in some conditions. The main effect RoHS has had is that we try to avoid lead, because using components with lead in them leads to an administrative headache.

 

Also what really surprises me is that they still allow beryllium ceramic packages in consumer applications, I'd personally be more worried about those at this point.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

Give me 13 minutes of my life back please. He just repeats "scientists make big claim, other scientists sceptical and awaiting replication" 20 different ways for most of it. Not a single useful comment made by him in the entire video.

What I dislike about these videos is the tone. Very loud, very definitive and highly sure.

The copper eddy-current things is somewhat valid, but as you said the same phenomenon can have different explanations. In this case there could be some movements from eddy currents, but also some from the Meissner effect. Who knows, so let's wait until someone else tries this, hopefully with a control.

1 hour ago, ImorallySourcedElectrons said:

That being said, having worked at Korean universities, this is quite typical for Korean research institutes: some unknown professor makes huge claims based on shoddy evidence to raise their status. When others can't replicate the results it's because "Koreans are better at lab work" or "Western science doesn't account for everything", etc. If anyone non-Korean criticizes it, they'll encounter a wave of angry Korean nationalists, even if everyone proves the science is shoddy. Meanwhile, said professor will then get glorified by the local media trying to make a quick buck of said nationalism. The professor in question will then receive a lot of research funding, and if they keep their mouth shut they have a cosy career ahead of them. But it's rare for this type of exploit to get picked up by international media, so it'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

I don't have first-hand experience with Korean Universities, but I do remember the stem cell research claims several years back. It would fit the pattern, plus there seems to be some infighting about potential credit and results in the group(s) who published it.

 

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

That claim comes from Thunderf00t, i've seen him make a whole bunch of confidently wrong assumptions in the past, (notably about the physics side of the Hyperloop concept). He's clearly relatively knowledgeable in some areas, but you have to understand how something applies in the real world in a variety of applications to even begin to make such broad claims, and even then you have to remember you might be wrong.

I watched quite a few videos by him in the past and also read some of the research papers (mostly the ones about the coloumb explosion of alkali metals in water). Seems to me that he is competent as a scientist, at least in his field, but I've met a lot of competent and legit scientists in my career so far who clearly overestimated their knowledge in other fields (I would argue I might have been one of them in the past, who knows). A lot of times things change in fields over time and what you learned 10, 20 years back in university might no longer be the state of the art/knowledge. Especially when it comes to material science and engineering.