Every year, there are reports of the discovery of "room-temperature superconductors", but humans are not yet aware of it. Superconductors can conduct electricity without resistance, but this can only be achieved at temperatures close to absolute zero at present, and if it were possible at room temperature, it would be a complete world-shaking shock. It will definitely come to pass.
Now, researchers at Swiss quantum startup Terra Quantum and Campinas State University in Brazil have announced that they have discovered graphite that exhibits superconductivity at room temperature and pressure.
Graphite is the material that makes up the writing part of a pencil. Single-layer graphite, a type of graphite called graphene, while very common and common, is the subject of many studies as a miracle material with interesting properties.
Graphene has long been extremely difficult to obtain, which has hindered research in this field for many years. However, in 2004, it was discovered that graphene could be obtained by attaching graphite sheets to scotch tape and peeling them off, and research has progressed rapidly since then.
The focus of the study is on high-orientation pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) rather than graphene.
Hogg is a synthetic form of graphite in which graphite crystallites are arranged at extremely small angles. This is extremely important because this material has interesting properties that surpass those of pencils.
A research team led by Professor Yakov Kopelevich of the University of Campinas used scotch tape to cut the hopg into thin slices. The sheets are covered with dense wrinkles that are almost parallel to each other.
The team believes that the Cooper pair is formed in the wrinkles of the material. A Cooper pair is a pair of electrons that begin to interact and bond together and are particles that support superconductivity. In superconducting materials, this phenomenon occurs at temperatures below a certain temperature called critical temperature. The researchers in this study were unable to determine the critical temperature, but it was around room temperature, about 300 degrees Kelvin (27 degrees Celsius, 80 degrees Fahrenheit).
The researchers measured the material's electrical resistance and magnetization, which matched the behavior of other superconducting materials. The importance of having a specific critical temperature value is that the material changes continuously and rapidly after this threshold is exceeded.
In addition to heat capacity, there are many other ways to test for superconductivity, and evidence of these methods will also need to be collected. Creating a material that exhibits superconductivity at room temperature and pressure would be a potentially civilization-changing breakthrough, but still awaiting validation by third-party organizations.
The emerging field of quantum computing will benefit enormously, as qubits that currently operate at only 10-20 mk will be able to operate at room temperature. "This is now a reality. ”