The room-temperature superconductor that never was......

[Jan Panteltje]

The room-temperature superconductor that wasn\'t
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/the-room-temperature-superconductor-that-wasnt/

I suspected diamagnetism right away, seems now confirmed,
and more peculiar stuff was found...

 

[Martin Brown]

On 07/09/2023 06:11, Jan Panteltje wrote:

The room-temperature superconductor that wasn\'t
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/the-room-temperature-superconductor-that-wasnt/

You have to be a spectacularly bad experimentalist to confuse the sort
of conductivity that mixed copper and lead sulphides matrix might reach
for superconductivity. It seems that the purest form of the compound
that they claimed to have made is in fact an insulator.

The sulphur in the original recipe was acting as a dopant or worse.

I suspected diamagnetism right away, seems now confirmed,
and more peculiar stuff was found...

There is still an outside chance that one of the various compounds they
made is actually a 1D superconductor but personally I have my doubts.

It only takes one dead short in a polycrystalline matrix to make its
resistance zero even if everything else is inert.

Definitely one for the \"Journal or Irreproducible Science\".

--
Martin Brown

 

[boB]

On Thu, 7 Sep 2023 20:15:41 +0100, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 07/09/2023 06:11, Jan Panteltje wrote:
The room-temperature superconductor that wasn\'t
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/the-room-temperature-superconductor-that-wasnt/

You have to be a spectacularly bad experimentalist to confuse the sort
of conductivity that mixed copper and lead sulphides matrix might reach
for superconductivity. It seems that the purest form of the compound
that they claimed to have made is in fact an insulator.

The sulphur in the original recipe was acting as a dopant or worse.

I suspected diamagnetism right away, seems now confirmed,
and more peculiar stuff was found...

There is still an outside chance that one of the various compounds they
made is actually a 1D superconductor but personally I have my doubts.

It only takes one dead short in a polycrystalline matrix to make its
resistance zero even if everything else is inert.

Definitely one for the \"Journal or Irreproducible Science\".

If I were going to want to use a real room temperature superconductor,
it wouldn\'t be room temperature after a few minutes in the hot-box I
would use it in because everything else in the box would heat up.

Would love to use it on a high frequency trasformer but then the core
itself would heat up the super conducting wire and it wouldn\'t be room
temperature anymore. Would be very interesting to try though even if
I had to add a bumch more turns so that the core didn\'t heat up much.

Might be unexpected surprises but also the FETs and
non-superconduction wire would still heat up.

Maybe some day there will be SC wire that runs at 100 degrees C but I
won\'t hold my breath. I\'m too old.

boB

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Friday, September 8, 2023 at 5:15:52 AM UTC+10, Martin Brown wrote:

On 07/09/2023 06:11, Jan Panteltje wrote:
The room-temperature superconductor that wasn\'t
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/the-room-temperature-superconductor-that-wasnt/
You have to be a spectacularly bad experimentalist to confuse the sort
of conductivity that mixed copper and lead sulphides matrix might reach
for superconductivity. It seems that the purest form of the compound
that they claimed to have made is in fact an insulator.

The sulphur in the original recipe was acting as a dopant or worse.
I suspected diamagnetism right away, seems now confirmed,
and more peculiar stuff was found...

There is still an outside chance that one of the various compounds they
made is actually a 1D superconductor but personally I have my doubts.

It\'s not likely, but it\'s not impossible. More research is needed - and probably a better theoretical insight into what might be going on, and how you can set up an environment where Cooper pairs can form.

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1109/1109.3978.pdf

It only takes one dead short in a polycrystalline matrix to make its
resistance zero even if everything else is inert.

One can quibble that if the resistance was actually zero it would be a very localised super-conducting spot. A \"dead short\" usually means merely metallic conduction.

> Definitely one for the \"Journal or Irreproducible Science\".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Irreproducible_Results

One of our friends won an Ignoble Prize, so I may be more conscious of the right name than most.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney