For the first time in the world, researchers from Korea University succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure.
Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with zero resistance. This means that no energy is lost as heat when electricity flows through a superconductor. This property has many potential applications, including Ultra-efficient electricity grids, Ultrafast and energy-efficient computer chips, and Ultrapowerful magnets which could be used to levitate trains, power MRI machines, and control fusion reactors.
Since the discovery of the first superconductor, many efforts to search for new roomtemperature superconductors have been carried out worldwide through their experimental clarity and theoretical perspectives. The recent success of developing room-temperature superconductors with hydrogen sulfide and yttrium super-hydride has great attention worldwide, which is expected by strong electron-phonon coupling theory with high-frequency hydrogen phonon modes. However, it is difficult to apply them to actual application devices in daily life because of the tremendously high pressure, and more efforts are being made to overcome the high-pressure problem.
For the first time in the world, the Korean researchers report the success in synthesizing a room-temperature and ambient-pressure superconductor with a chemical approach to solve the temperature and pressure problem. They named the first room temperature and ambient pressure superconductor LK-99. The
superconductivity of LK-99 proved with the Critical temperature (Tc), Zero-resistivity, Critical current (Ic), Critical magnetic field (Hc), and Meissner effect. Several data were collected and analyzed in detail to figure out the puzzle of superconductivity of LK-99: X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (EPR), Heat Capacity, and Superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) data.
News Source: arXiv:2307.12008
