*Warning Sensationalistic Headlines*
This is not room temperature superconductivity !
LOL i read this on slashdot this morning and
just new that it would pop up here. What makes slashdot in my opinion, isnt so much the articles but the readers responses, collective wisdom. Use it.
From Slashdot Readers Comments
I'm holding TFA (Science, 14 March 2008, pp. 1506-1509). The highest critical temperatures they observed, regardless of pressure, were around 17 Kelvin (between 96-120 GPa). These are interesting results because they are among the few measurements available to shed light on the behavior of dense hydrides at these pressures, and these materials might, if better understood, one day allow a room temperature superconductor to be made. This, however, is not it.
Thanks for looking up the original paper (DOI: 10.1126/science.1153282). The EETimes reporter seems to be terribly confused.
The money quote from the paper:
On cooling, a typical metallic behavior of the resistance was observed and eventually becoming superconducting (SC) at Tc {approx} 7 K (Fig. 2B). Upon further compression, the sample became completely opaque at 76 GPa, and Tc increased, with pressure up to 17.5 K at 96 GPa and 17 K at 120 GPa (Fig. 2C). At higher pressures, Tc decreases to 8.8 K at 165 GPa and is then likely to increase again to 11.3 K at 192 GPa (Fig. 2C). The behavior of Tc between 90 GPa and 120 GPa is suggestive that higher values of critical temperature of superconductivity may be possible. However, uncontrollable change of pressure during sample loading (20) prohibited us from studying this regime in detail.
So the highest TC they achieved was 17k @120GPA. The author has become confused and declared that high pressure instead of low temperature has opened up a new pathway to super conductors and then on top of that they have elaborated that to "room temperature"
I see articles like these every few months. They arent all that bad, they do a good job of waking me up in the morning
It would be nice though if this tech got us at least to SC with liquid Nitrogen
oh and
Silane is pyrophoric and boils at 161 K. It may be a while before this leads to practical results.
darn, But i like this idea though......
Plus, how are you going to put conductors under great pressure ?
1. Make a wire of the material.
2. Clad material with a metal coating at high temperature.
3. Wait for the cladding to contract as it cools.
It's like the old metal shop trick where you get a red-hot brass washer that barely fits on a dry-ice cold steel rod and put them together.