What are superconductors? Well, they are materials that can conduct electric current without any resistance, meaning that no energy is lost through heat. These conductors have been known to humanity for more than a century. However, previous superconductors did not work at room temperature and required high pressure. On the other hand, LK-99, which was developed by a team of South Korean researchers, was claimed to work at room temperature. If this claim proves to be correct, it would open a world of revolution.

However, through many tests it was concluded that LK-99 is likely not a room temperature superconductor. A lot of consensus is emerging about the superconductor that the team had discovered. Even though a room temperature superconductor could be hard to imagine, research will continue. For instance, many professionals have stated that this will happen in the near future.

Superconductivity was first discovered in 1911 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh. He used liquid helium, which has a boiling point of -269 degree celsius. He found that, at this temperature, the electrical resistance vanished. Thus, this means that electric current will not lose energy as it moves. If this was right, theoretically, we would be able to obtain the maximum efficiency for energy transfer.

Electric current comes from the electrons, negatively charged particles in atoms. Usually, a mobile electron will bounce off atoms as it vibrates, gradually losing some energy. As a result, the farther it travels, the more energy it loses. About five to ten percent of the electricity generated from the power plants is lost as heat while traveling to households and industries.

Until 1957, the explanation for why all the electrical resistance disappeared in metals at a critical temperature was unknown. However, in 1957, a team of three scientists reported that superconductivity is triggered when the active electrons make a pair due to their way of movement. These paired up electrons are called Cooper pairs and they have a distinguished characteristic. This characteristic is that all the paired up electrons can move in one huge particle, too large for any vibration to happen.

For normal metals, the superconductivity phenomena can only happen at extremely low temperatures as the electron pairs are too easily broken up when exposed to heat. However, in the 1980s, the whole world of physics was shocked by the discovery of a special type of materials that belonged to a family called cuprates which are not metals, but are weakly composed ceramic substances. This amazing substance could superconduct at much higher temperatures than normal metals. It was the first superconductor at a temperature of -238 degree celsius which was approximately thirty degrees higher than normal metals. Soon, these high temperature superconductors were found to have much higher critical temperatures. This meant that they could be cooled very easily using liquid nitrogen.

This discovery won the Nobel Prize in Physics 1987 and it led to the hope for power lines that do not lose energy while transferring electricity to households. Also, because superconductors can carry high currents, they were used to make extremely powerful electromagnets. These devices are now used in MRI devices and many more.

In 2015, a team of scientists from Germany reported superconductivity in a hydrogen and sulfur compound. Just four years after this discovery, the team stated a compound of hydrogen and metal lanthanum that showed features of superconductivity. Strangely, a group in Washington DC found the same material to be superconductive at a very high temperature of -30 degrees celsius. However, to become superconductive, all these materials had to be squeezed to the pressure level needed to create diamonds at the Earth’s core.

This makes it hard to create this material, but this March, the researchers at the University of Rochester claimed that they have made a shocking discovery: superconductivity at about 21 degrees celsius in another hydrogen-containing material requiring only a small amount of pressure on it. Along with this came the LK-99 which needed basically no squeezing.

But all such applications are still not practical at all. Thus, all of this remains hypothetical, but the quest will surely go on. Meanwhile, scientists in this field have enjoyed some rare moments while in their career. According to Sinead Griffin, “It’s so exciting to see the interest in solid-state physics!”

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