As I understand it, superconductors work best at temperatures approaching absolute zero (-273.15C). For example, Google tells me that the superconductor in an MRI operates at -269C.
There has been a lot a buzz lately about room temperature (25C) superconductors being discovered, but why is room temperature the focus? Why not focus on superconductors that work in reasonably cold environments? For example, we can easily get temperatures to -15C in a freezer. Why not create superconductors that work in that temperature range rather than 25C?
Research looks into any and all superconductors all the time. The buzz right now is because a new one was potentially found, and it happens to function at room temperature. Discoveries don’t happen on a schedule. If a superconductor was discovered that functioned at -15C, that would be huge news too as I believe the current warmest ambient pressure superconductor needs -140C to transition.
For a lot of use cases, they need to be viable completely outside of any containment.
If you create a superconductor that needs -30C to function, you can’t use it in consumer electronics because it would make them too large. If you create a superconductor that needs -10C to function, you can’t use it to transmit power over long distances
Don’t get this wrong though, scientists have been working on finding ANY superconductors in the hope of eventually being able to reach the end goal of a room temperature type. There are still unknown mechanisms that cause super conduction, so any breakthrough usually helps us find more possible candidates.
So instead of trying to get it running at temperatures 300 degrees warmer, just focus on trying to run it about 250 degrees warmer? Should be much easier, right?
Doesn’t it sound a little ridiculous like that?
Because then it wouldn’t be easy to implement and won’t work in consumer electronics. The entire point a room temperature superconductor is exciting is because you don’t have to create a special environment for it to work, which immediately makes it a million times more useful than a superconductor that would work when cold.
Still, LK-99 isn’t confirmed to be a superconductor, we’re still waiting on more tests.
There is a lot of activities around “high temperature supra conductor” high temperature meaning using liquid nitrogen as a cooling fluid. It would already be less a hassle than liquid helium. Some do exists, and the question that interest every industry using supra-conductor is whether the cost saved by switching to liquid nitrogen is worth developing a whole new product with a relatively recent technology.
Room temperature would be a massive breakthrough as suddenly you don’t really need to deal with a cooling system (or may-be a water cooling/fan like any other electric equipment) not only it would ease the life of people aready using super-conducting materials but it would also allow to use it in more cases (Maglev, electric motor)
Even something at -15 would’ve been pretty substantial. The problem is before now, it was super low temps like the MRI you mentioned were just the norm. The fact that this one is potentially room temp one is an even bigger deal. That’s also why you see so many skeptics who doubt that THAT big a leap could happen seemingly over night.
Hell, compared to -296, -15 or 25, that’s room temp either way.
I guess that is sort of what bugs me. Why are we jumping from one extreme to the other instead of figuring out stuff in between first.
It’s not an intentional jump. Most superconductors are extremely impractical for consumer use (and even just cold ones are too realistically) and materials scientists are always just chasing improvements, this one just happens to be a very dramatic one. Popular science is only a small chunk of what’s happening globally.
Again, I say all this under the hopes that the SK guys aren’t full of shit because this would actually be so cool.
Because if you can make one at 25C, why bother with one at -100C?
It’s not a video game tech tree. Scientific progress isn’t linear. We hypothesise, we experiment, and sometimes we get lucky. If it was an engineering problem we could make incremental improvements to the manufacturing process to get small improvements in the results, but it’s not.
Short answer is power lines. Tons of power is lost as heat between the power plant and your home. If they can make a room temp superconductor then every powerline could be replaced with a line that has no losses. This could mean power plants can be smaller and still supply the current power requirements or they could serve more people with the same size power plant which would hopefully bring down electricity prices some since they have more customers.
