First superconducting transistor promises PC revolution

THE world's first superconducting transistor, a long-standing goal for applied physicists, could lead to dramatically faster microchips.

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Superconductor breakthroughs abound: some like it hot

Normally, big discoveries in a given field come at the rate of a few a year, if that. However, the past six weeks have seen not one, but a series of announcements that may change the face of superconductivity research. Starting with a publication in the February 23rd edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and ending with three separate announcements from various Chinese research groups, these last few weeks have given us the description of a previously unknown class of high temperature superconductors.

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EE Times corrects story on silane as a potential superconductor

A Canadian-German research team has reported what they say is the first evidence that superconductivity can occur in a common gaseous hydrogen compound -- silane -- when compressed to a solid at very high pressure.

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Scientists Create Zero-Resistance Superconductor

According to reports, Japanese scientist Yoichi Kamihara has discovered a zero resistance superconductor. Layered in iron and stabilized with phosphorous, the superconductor has a negative resistance at 269º Celsius. Currently he is researching ways to replace the phosphorous with other elements including arsenic.

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Powerful superconductor is in a class all its own

Superconductivity has perplexed, astounded and inspired scientists ever since it was discovered in 1911. Now, in the latest of a century of surprises, researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University have discovered unusual properties in a novel superconducting material that point to an entirely new kind of superconductor.

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High-temperature superconductor 'pseudogap' imaged

Cornell researchers and colleagues have produced the first atomic-scale description of what electrons are doing in the mysterious "pseudogap" in high-temperature superconductors.

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Magnet Controls a Superconductor

Magnetic fields can destroy superconductivity--the flow of electric current without resistance--so magnets don't usually get along very well with superconductors. But in the April Physical Review B, researchers show that by putting a thin magnetic layer on top of a superconducting film and applying a magnetic field, they can tweak the superconductor’s properties in a useful way. Their arrangement makes the superconductor anisotropic, meaning that more current can flow in one direction than in the perpendicular direction. And the specific orientation of these directions is controllable with another field. The technique has potential for superconducting devices.

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Superconductor electric vehicle

Sumitomo Electric has developed what is being called the world’s first automobile powered by a superconducting motor. The electric passenger sedan (a modified Toyota Crown Comfort), which is powered by a high-temperature superconducting motor cooled by liquid nitrogen, was unveiled in Osaka on June 12 and will go on display at the Hokkaido Toyako G8 Summit on June 19.

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Superconductors Enter Commercial Utility Service

2 July 2008—Last Wednesday, American Superconductor officially commissioned the world's first high-temperature superconductor power-transmission cable system to be used in a commercial power grid. Superconductors can supply lots of energy quickly, efficiently, and unobtrusively. They conduct 150 times the electricity of similarly sized copper wires. However, because of technological difficulties, the commercial development of superconductor power-cable systems has been slow.

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Silicon becomes a superconductor

Silicon -- the archetypal semiconductor -- has at long last been shown to demonstrate superconductivity. By substituting 9% of the silicon atoms with boron atoms, physicists in France have found that the resistance of the material drops sharply when cooled below 0.35 K

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Preparation, Structure and Properties of A High-Temperature Superconductor

Onnes, a Dutch physicist, discovered in 1911 that mercury loses all resistance to electrical flow when cooled to about 4 K; thus, a current once started will flow continuously. Such a phenomenon is known as superconductivity. At ordinary temperatures, metals have some resistance to the flow of electrons, due to the vibration of the atoms which scatter the electrons. As the temperature is lowered, the atoms vibrate less and the resistance declines smoothly, until the material’s critical temperature, Tc, is reached. At this point, the resistance drops abruptly to zero (figure 1). If an electrical current is started in a superconducting ring, it will continue forever.

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The first Canadian high-Tc superconductor Brock Logo

Brock University Professors F.P. Koffyberg, F.S. Razavi, and B. Mitrovic of the Physics Department, Division of Maths and Sciences, have proven the existence of a new superconductor.

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Iron Exposed as High-Temperature Superconductor

For more than 20 years, the only known superconductors that worked far above liquid-helium temperatures were a few dozen compounds—virtually all based on copper. Now scientists have discovered the first high-temperature superconductors based on iron. These novel materials could help unravel one of the biggest mysteries in science—how exactly the high-temperature versions work.

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New Family Of Superconductors Discovered

University of Saskatchewan Canada Research Chair John Tse and colleagues in Germany have identified a new family of superconductors – research that could eventually lead to the design of better superconducting materials for a wide variety of industrial uses.

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Ceramic Superconductor Single Crystal

Superconductivity is a phenomenon characterized by the disappearance of electrical resistance in various metals, alloys, and compounds when they are cooled below a certain level, usually termed the critical temperature (Tc). The phenomenon was first observed in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who noted that the resistance of a frozen mercury rod abruptly dropped to zero when cooled to the boiling point of helium (4.2 Kelvin). Onnes is also credited with realizing that a material in a superconducting state can be returned to its standard, nonsuperconducting condition through exposure to a strong magnetic field of a certain critical value or by passing a large current through it. For his significant findings, Onnes was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize for Physics. Yet, another 20 years would pass before any other major discoveries regarding superconductors would be unearthed, scientists believing for many years that other than their intriguing lack of resistance, superconductors acted as other materials. In 1933, however, Walter Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld discovered that superconducting materials displayed an unusually high level of diamagnetism (the ability to repel magnetic fields completely). Now known as the Meissner effect, this property of superconductors is often demonstrated experimentally by the levitation of a magnet over a superconducting material.

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