First room temperature superconductor?

What is superconductivity? What is a superconductor? What is the specialty of a superconductor? What are the benefits of a superconductor? Why is a superconductor more important at room temperature? We can discuss this.

What is Superconductivity?

Superconductivity is a phenomenon whereby a charge moves through a material without resistance. First, it was discovered in 1911, coincidence by Dutch physicist Kammerlingh Onnes.

What is a superconductor?

A superconductor is a material that can conduct electricity or transport electrons from one atom to another without resistance. This means if we pass a current through a superconductor, there is no loss of energy like heat or sound. It happens when the material comes into its “critical temperature (Tc)”. There are two types of superconductors.

Type 1 super conductors:

Type 1 superconductor consists of the basic conductive elements in the environment to use for every electrical stuff. Between 0.000325K and 7.8K are the temperatures that the elements behave as type 1 superconductors at standard pressure. Some type 1 elements need very huge pressure to act as a superconductor. Sulfur requires 9.3 million atmospheres and 17K temperature to act as a superconductor.

Type 2 super conductors:

Type 2 superconductors are composed of metallic compounds. They reach to the superconductive state at much higher temperatures than type 1 superconductors.

Superconductivity in room temperature!

It takes more than 100 years to discover a room-temperature superconductor. Scientists attempted to discover some properties that get from cooling elements by reducing the vibration of electrons. They discovered first with Mercury; they experienced that Mercury reached to superconductive state when the temperature is near 4.5K. it was a coincidence in 1911 but that was the start of this journey.

Why did this take so long to discover room temperature super conductor?

Superconductors are not only carrying zero resistance property.
In 1933, German researchers Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld directed a superconductor to a magnetic field, instead of going through the magnetic field, they repel the magnetic field. Perfect diamagnetism is a property of superconductors.

In 1950, Scientists discovered another property, the isotope effect. They researched that heavier isotopes of mercury or lead elements have less transition temperature than lighter. From this discovery, they realized that electron-phonon coupling plays a role in superconductivity.
1958 was the year that built a theory to this phenomenon, BCS(Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer) theory. But with this theory, they could not be able to describe the fact for a random element that the element gets to superconductive state at what conditions. Later with experiments scientists were able to find the conditions for a random element.

The first room-temperature superconductor is discovered recently by the team led by Sri Lankan physicist Professor Ranga Dias.

How did they solve this mystery?

They assumed that with Hydrogen would act as a superconductor in higher pressures, as above mentioned, for superconductivity, strong bonds and lighter weights of the compound is very important. Hydrogen has both qualities.

They found the metallic hydrogen act as a superconductor at room temperature and very huge pressures. To create metallic hydrogen, they needed 500GPa pressure. They tried to bring the pressure to a lower state without affecting the superconductive property of metallic hydrogen by giving chemical pressure than mechanical pressure by adding Yttrium, Carbon, and Sulfur. Finally, they achieved room-temperature superconductor, Carbonaceous sulfur hydride(CSH7) in 15deg C, and 250GPa that can be accessed easier than before.

Why do this invention this much important to future?

Superconductors will be mainly used for transportation because of the Meissner effect, we will be able to develop fictional trains and many transportation methods and by building electrical current wires, we can reduce a large amount of power loss.
This will be the discovery of the 21st century

Author: Induwara Bandara

sources :

1.Nalanda College Astronomy YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlsKJiQZ4PM)

2.http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/113.web.stuff/travis/what_is.html