Huge if this is true. Claim is: They have attained superconductivity at room temperature and ambient pressure. Also superconductivity holds till 127 C.
Huge if this is true. Claim is: They have attained superconductivity at room temperature and ambient pressure. Also superconductivity holds till 127 C.
There was a recent ‘discovery’ that seems to have gone very quiet already this year, iirc the results couldn’t be reproduced. So I guess we have to wait and see if another team can reproduce these results. A line I found interesting was:
“The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure”
‘A slight volume shrinkage’ kinda sounds like the results of pressure to me? I’m not equipped to fully understand all the terms they use, but it sounds like they’ve found a way to apply pressure internally in the material, without using pressure in the environment.
They replaced some of the lead(II) ions with copper(II), which has a smaller ionic radius. That’s why the structure would be smaller. Then they meander around other superconductor discoveries to make the argument that this volume change is the cause of the superconducting property here.