University physical scientists synthesize new superconducting material, developing a process that may help ‘break down barriers and open the door to many potential applications.’

Compressing simple molecular solids with hydrogen at extremely high pressures, University of Rochester engineers and physicists have, for the first time, created material that is superconducting at room temperature.

Featured as the cover article in the journal Nature, the work was conducted by the lab of Ranga Dias, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of physics and astronomy.

Dias says developing materials that are superconducting—without electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic field at room temperature—is the “holy grail” of condensed matter physics. Sought for more than a century, such materials “can definitely change the world as we know it,” Dias says.

 

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Image via J. Adam Fenster.