A century later

Superconductivity a100 years later

James L Bradley July 17th, 2011
I read recently that the worlds supposed first quantum computer made by D-Wave Systems in Canada was delivered to its purchaser Lockheed-Martin, albeit there are some who question whether the extremely fast memory access and processing task is actually a quantum unit, its creators have published papers in peer-reviewing journals demonstrating its basic elements are indeed superconducting actions. Everyone of us, anal enough to follow the world of superconductivity realize that this is a science that will change the world of physics as we know and understand it today, and yet Id bet that even amongst this group very few knew that this spring marked the 100 th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity which in a nutshell is the ability of a material to transport electrical current with no loss, or in theory throwing out the factor of current versus resistance that creates heat which is lost into the surrounding environment, and the loading element receiving less current. Current applied across a superconductive material can and will exist for years without any measurable decay. On April 8th, 1911, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes a Dutch physicist and Noble laureate who pioneered refrigeration techniques, was studying the resistance of solid mercury at cryogenic (cold) temperatures using the recently-produce liquid helium as a refrigerant. At a temperature of -452.11F he noted that the resistance of the mercury disappeared in the same experiment he also noted the superfluid transition of helium at -455.71F without recognizing its significance, such is the process of science. Over the decades superconductivity has been observed in several other materials, such as lead at a temperature of (447.07F) in 1913 and in niobium nitride1 in 1941 at (-430.87F). Current technology has permitted our scholars to determine the temperature of Outer Space at -454F. This would mean electrons pretty much meet no or very little resistance, as they travel through the immense vacuum separating the celestial bodies found in the Universe. The first commercial superconducting wire, a niobium-titanium alloy was developed in 1961 by researchers at Westinghouse, this wire allowed the construction of the first practical superconducting magnets in the same year Brian D Josephson, a Welsh physicist made an important theoretical prediction that a supercurrent can flow between two pieces of superconductor separate by a thin insulator this discovery called the Josephson effect is used in superconducting devices such as SQUIDS2, used to obtain highly accurate measurement of the magnetic flux quantum. In the physical world of electric transmission over great distances would change over night if a combination of chemicals and material were to be able to operate at normal temperatures in a
1

Niobium nitride is a compound of niobium and nitrogen with the chemical formula NbN. At low temperatures, niobium nitride becomes a superconductor, and is used in detectors for infrared light. 2 A SQUID (for superconducting quantum interference device) is a very sensitive magnetometer used to measure extremely weak magnetic fields, based on superconducting loops containing Josephson junctions.

superconductive manner, whereas 100 amps of current in would give 100 amps out at the end of the transmission line, today we overcome some of this current/resistance decay by transporting very high voltage across the facility, such as the designed network in China which will transport over 800,000 volts over a specially constructed system using very expensive cables. It is a simple Ohms law formula that dictates the lower current whereas Current equals Voltage divided by Resistance, the higher the voltage the smaller amount of current is gobble up by the resistance of the wire. I=E/R Up until 1986 physicists believed that the Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer (BCS) theory developed in 1957 would not allow any superconductivity at temperatures above (-405.67F), in 1986 Bednorz and Muller discovered superconductivity in a lanthanum3-based cuprate4 perovskite5 material that had a transition temperature of (-396.67F), soon after it was discovered that by replacing lanthanum with yttrium raised the critical temperature to (-294.07F). In 1993 the highest temperature superconductor was made of a ceramic material containing thallium, mercury, copper barium, calcium and oxygen that made the transition at (-211.27F) so you see, our physicists have a ways to go to reach and operating temperature in the real world, outside of a controlled environment. Until our scientific world discovers a combination of chemical and materials that super conduct at ambient temperatures they remain as a great promise only, whereas the temperatures at which they conduct today can only be achieved using liquid-helium cooling. Although they have been able to achieve pretty high (or low depending on how you look at it) using cuprates the cuprates are extremely difficult to work with as they are very brittle, this is reinforced by their strong dependency on materials that have a quasi-two-dimensional structure consisting of a weakly-coupled stack of conductive sheets albeit industry is slowly developing methods and applications that are overcoming this disadvantage. In doing so while continued to work with cuprates and other combinations of Earths elements the hope and challenge is that eventually better superconductors are just around the corner. Cuprate wires are being used to manufacture high-capacity cable for electric-power transmission, and lighter-weight generators for wind turbines. Stronger superconducting magnets are leading in the development of MRIs with increased diagnostic capabilities and superconductors are being used for levitating trains in high-speed rail transport, and in microwave filters for improved signal bandwidth in cellular and wireless digital transmission. It took 46-years from the discovery of superconductivity to 1957 when the BCS theory came into being, along its path of discovery a lot of famous physicists tried to crack the mystery of superconductivity, great thinkers such as Einstein, Heisenberg and Feynman are three that come to mind, not that they didnt throw a few creative theories on the table I guess they figured that getting one amp from here to there wasnt really worth their time. The basic premise behind the BCS was that if electrons pair up, those couples could indeed superconduct!
3

Lanthanum is a silvery white metallic element that belongs to group 3 of the periodic table and is the first element of the lanthanide series 4 Cuprates (from Latin cuprum meaning copper) are chemical compounds containing copper anio. 5 A perovskite structure is any material with the same type of crystal structure as calcium titanium oxide (CaTiO3),

Science knew the mechanism behind the coupling of electrons, albeit electrons or negatively charged thereby repelling each other, the positive ions that they leave behind when they flow through a metal can mediate an effective attraction between two electrons under restrictive circumstances, such as the metal has to be cold. Although the cuprates super-conduct at higher temperatures, if you relate -200+ a higher temperature, and in addition they posses some pretty exotic properties whereas they are constructed by doping electrical carriers into a host material that is a magnetic insulator, in real life the last place anyone would look for a conventional superconductor and unlike BCS theory, in which the pairs are isotropic with identical properties in all direction in space, the pairs in cuprates are heavy in being anisotropic, resembling a cloverleaf. Some of the boys and girls at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have discovered a way of improving the efficiency of some superconductors by as much as 500% - not bad! Guys. While Judith MaemanusDriscoll at the University of Cambridge says the team had found a simple and cheap method for increasing the amount of current flowing through superconducting-coated conductors in a magnetic field. She added that there was immense potential for improvement to efficiency in equipment such as motors and generators where high magnetic fields have traditionally diminished current densities, meaning that the current (I) reacting with the resistance (R) created heat and that the evil enemy of electricity the IR drop ate up some of the energy. In tandem with Los Alamos colleagues Judith and her gang discovered that when the compound barium zirconate is deposited simultaneously with yttrium-barium-copperoxide superconductors, it naturally forms nano-scale particles embedded in superconductor films the result being a two-to-five-fold increase in current densities of coated conductors in a high magnetic field operating at liquid nitrogen temperatures (-321F). Why the urgency in making superconductors? Although the headlines scream the advances made in supercomputing the primary goal is to reduce the voltage losses occurring in the long-distance transport of voltage, whereas the voltage grids of the world all suffer from the problem of so-many-volts generated or kilowatt hours, and so-many-volts arriving at the users location. With the worlds demand for operating voltage increasing on a daily basis the voltage produced at the power source, whatever the method, is usually a distance away from the customertherefore depending on the distance there is a certain amount of voltage that is lost due to the resistance of the transport medium, whether it be steel wire coated with aluminum or some other combination of wire. Superconducting wire carries hundreds of times more electrical current than the conventional copper wire with little or no electrical resistance, thereby this advancing technology is predicted to bring energy efficiencies to our electrical-power transmission network across the world lately there has been a regenerated amount of excitement due to the fact that a major reduction in resistance can be achieved within the incorporation of the technology into commercial processing of superconductors. Although we havent achieved the zero-resistance stage, the advances achieved on a small scale have produced powerful, energy-efficient superconducting electric motors and generators for civilian and

military applications. The big-boss at the Superconductivity Technology Center in Los Alamos, Dean Perterson remarked, This is a significant technical advancement because it means we are now beginning to understand how to control defects in these superconducting materials and use them to our advantage, this was the first time we have been able to control the structural defects and in doing so, better engineer the materials structure to optimize performance. Albeit we are far from the day when we can transport current long distances without any loss, one hopes that the days of being able to do so are just around the corner imagine the prospect of putting one-ampere of current in one end and finding one-ampere of current 1000s of miles away now that would be progress, in order to achieve the dream of millions a material or process that allows a known material to achieve this will have to be found or developed. Until then the power-producers of the world are loosing billions of dollars of revenue due to resistance or heat dissipation.

The goal to rid the transmission network of Rc (the conductor resistance)