Room Temperature Superconductors?

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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MSimon
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Room Temperature Superconductors?

Post by MSimon »

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http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/show ... =206904213

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HT raelik777
PORTLAND, Ore. — A new superconducting material fabricated by a Canadian-German team has been fabricated out of a silicon-hydrogen compound and does not require cooling.
It may be necessary to cool the SC to get the required B field. LN at 77K would probably do the job very well.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

PolyGirl
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Reported at Slashdot as well

Post by PolyGirl »

Superconductors at room temperature is also reported at:
Slashdot Article
I have not read the posts as of yet but I will and follow any links that I come across.

Regards
Polygirl
The more I know, the less I know.

PolyGirl
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Post by PolyGirl »

More information and links here:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/superc ... rogen.html

Slashdot Article just points to Msimon's Link.

Regards
Polygirl
The more I know, the less I know.

dch24
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Post by dch24 »

This could be really exciting, as it would help solve the "First Wall Problem" in polywell designs.

Let me see if I can explain it. (Obviously, I'm just restating a lot of things MSimon has said.) The magnets that generate the wiffle ball field need really high currents to generate a magnetic field that will confine enough electrons to form a virtual cathode in the center (the "well" in polywell).

A polywell large enough to generate more power than it takes to run the magnets, the electron guns, the charged wiffle ball, and so forth, will be fairly large. Large enough, in fact, that the magnetic fields to confine electrons will of necessity have to come from superconducting magnets, or the magnets would turn the high current into heat really fast. (There are specific numbers around here on the current required and the size of the polywell, posted by MSimon.)

Another much larger source of heat on the magnets will be the fusion reaction, producing alpha particles and neutrons at an incredible rate. Even though this "mini sun" will only hit the magnets over 20% of its surface area, it will heat the magnets with that full 20% of its "fusion power."

Now, the magnets have to be superconductors. Currently, the best way to design a superconducting magnet is to cool it practically to absolute zero Kelvin using multiple cooling stages (liquid Nitrogen, then liquid Helium). If the superconductor gets too hot, all the power flowing through it suddenly gets dumped as heat. It essentially explodes.

If the heat from the fusion reaction gets to the superconducting magnets, then they will stop being superconductors.

But a "room temperature" superconductor would be significantly less expensive to cool. Even just a liquid Nitrogen superconductor would be a lot less expensive to cool than one that requires liquid Helium.

Did I get that right?

Keegan
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Its a Fake !

Post by Keegan »

*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.
Purity is Power

PolyGirl
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Similar prophecy

Post by PolyGirl »

A similar article was posted by me in the Polywell forums under Theory.
Two aloof elements
Both articles mentioned that, two elements and high pressures are required. However, these superconductors will not bear fruit anytime soon.

Regards
Polygirl
The more I know, the less I know.

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