Less than two years after shocking the science world with the discovery of a material capable of room-temperature superconductivity, a team of UNLV physicists has upped the ante once again by reproducing the feat at the lowest pressure ever recorded.
In other words, science is closer than it's ever been to a usable, replicable material that could one day revolutionize how energy is transported. UNLV physicist Ashkan Salamat and colleague Ranga Dias, a physicist with the University of Rochester, made international headlines in 2020 by reporting room-temperature superconductivity for the first time. To achieve the feat, the scientists chemically synthesized a mix of carbon, sulfur, and hydrogen first into a metallic state, and then even further into a room-temperature superconducting state using extreme pressure—267 gigapascals—conditions you'd only find in nature near the center of the Earth. Fast forward less than two years, and the team is now able to complete the feat at just 91 GPa—roughly one-third the pressure initially reported. The new findings were published this month as an advance article in the journal Chemical Communications.
A super discovery
Through a detailed tuning of the composition of carbon, sulfur, and hydrogen used in the original breakthrough, scientists are able to produce a material at a lower pressure that retains its state of superconductivity.
"These are pressures at a level difficult to comprehend and evaluate outside of the lab, but our current trajectory shows that it's possible achieve relatively high superconducting temperatures at consistently lower pressures—which is our ultimate goal," said study lead author Gregory Alexander Smith, a graduate student researcher with UNLV's Nevada Extreme Conditions Laboratory (NEXCL). "At the end of the day, if we want to make devices beneficial to societal needs, then we have to reduce the pressure needed to create them." READ MORE...
