The two new papers uploaded to the arXiv preprint server, by researchers from South Korea, state the creation of a material known as LK-99 that can conduct superconductivity at room temperatures.
- The lead-based compound, which could conduct electricity without any resistance under normal conditions, could have long-term advantages.
About Superconductivity
- Superconductivity refers to a state in which a material offers zero, or near-zero, resistance to electric current.
- A current is nothing but the movement of charged particles, electrons in most cases, in a particular direction.
- When the electrons move, they collide, and interact, with other atoms in the material. It encounters resistance. Resistance involves a loss of energy, mostly in the form of heat. Part of the reason why electrical appliances get heated is this resistance.
- Elimination of this resistance can result in super-efficient electrical appliances, removal of transmission losses in power cables, and massive gains in energy.
- Superconducting materials show very interesting behaviour under magnetic field which allows the functioning of systems like the MRI scan machine and the superfast Maglev trains that float above the tracks.
- Superconductors have very critical uses in a wide variety of other scenarios as well.
- Superconductors are already being used, but their use is limited because of the extreme conditions that have to be created.
- As of now, superconductivity can be achieved only at very low temperatures, more than 250 degree Celsius below zero, very close to absolute zero which is – 273 degree Celsius.
- The first material to have been discovered to show super conductive properties was Mercury, which becomes a superconductor at close to 270 degree Celsius below zero. In 1911, while studying the properties of matter at very low temperature, the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and his team discovered that the electrical resistance of mercury goes to zero below 4.2 K (-269°C). This was the very first observation of the phenomenon of superconductivity.
- Scientists are looking for a material that can display superconductivity at room temperature (usually considered to be between 20 and 25 degree Celsius) and under normal pressure conditions.
- But room-temperature superconductivity does not necessarily have to be at room temperature. The term is commonly used to describe superconductive properties in conditions that are easy to create.
