Key Advance In Physics Research Might Help Enable Super-Efficient Electrical Energy

Today, an international group of scientists led by Séamus Davis, Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and University Cork, has announced outcomes that reveal the atomic mechanism behind high-temperature superconductors. The searchings for are released in PNAS.

Superconductors are products that can conduct electricity with zero resistance to ensure that an electric current can persist indefinitely. These are already utilized in various applications, including MRI scanners and high-speed maglev trains; however, superconductivity generally needs extremely low temperatures, restricting their widespread usage. A significant objective within physics research is to develop superconductors that work at ambient temperatures, which could revolutionize power transport and storage.

Certain copper oxide materials demonstrate superconductivity at greater temperatures than conventional superconductors; nonetheless, the mechanism behind this has remained unknown since their exploration in 1987.

To investigate this, an international group involving scientists in Oxford, Cork in Ireland, the United States., Japan, and Germany, created two new microscopy techniques. The 1st of these measured the difference in power between the copper and oxygen atom orbitals as a function of their location. The second technique measured the amplitude of the electron-pair wave function (the strength of the superconductivity) at every oxygen atom and at every copper atom.

“By visualizing the strength of the superconductivity as a function of differences between orbital energies, for the first time ever, we were able to measure precisely the relationship required to validate or invalidate one of the leading concepts of high-temperature superconductivity at the atomic scale,” said Professor Davis.

As predicted by the theory, the results showed a quantitative, inverse relationship between the charge-transfer energy difference between adjacent oxygen and copper atoms and the strength of the superconductivity.

According to the research group, this discovery could prove a historic step toward developing room-temperature superconductors. Ultimately, these could have far-reaching applications ranging from maglev trains, nuclear fusion reactors, quantum computers, and high-energy particle accelerators, not to mention super-efficient power transfer and storage.

In superconductor products, electric resistance is minimized because the electrons that carry the current are bound together in stable “Cooper sets.” In low-temperature superconductors, Cooper sets are held together by thermal vibrations; however, these become too unstable at greater temperatures. These new outcomes demonstrate that, in high-temperature superconductors, the Cooper pairs are instead held together by magnetic interactions, with the electron sets binding together through a quantum mechanical communication through the intervening oxygen atom.

Professor Davis included that “this has been one of the Holy Grails of problems in physics research for nearly 40 years. Many people believe that inexpensive, readily available room-temperature superconductors would be as revolutionary for the human civilization as the introduction of electricity itself.”

More information:

Shane M. O’Mahony et al, On the electron pairing mechanism of copper-oxide high temperature superconductivity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2207449119

Read the original article on PHYS.