One of the great unsolved challenges in science is to create superconductors that work at room temperature. Now, in an extraordinary paper published at the beginning of this month, Ivan Timokhin and Artem Mishchenko have achieved room temperature superconductivity while working from a home during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The first “high temperature” superconductors — those that superconduct above -200 degrees Celsius — were discovered in the 1980s. These were made of yttrium barium copper oxide, a ceramic material with a critical temperature of around -166 degrees C.
Since then, physicists have discovered materials with progressively higher critical temperatures. The most recent excitement has focused on rare earth hydrides, such as LaH10 which superconducts at -23 C, albeit at enormous pressures of more than a million times atmospheric pressure. But the ultimate goal is to find materials that superconduct at room temperature.
Timokhin and Mishchenko say they have finally solved the problem using a novel approach. “Instead of increasing the critical temperature Tc of a superconductor, the temperature of the room was decreased to an appropriate Tc value,” they say.
