By identifying other materials which have similar properties, hopefully it will help us find new superconductors at higher and higher temperatures
- Suchitra Sebastian
Harnessing the enormous technological potential of high-temperature superconductors – which could be used in lossless electrical grids, next-generation supercomputers and levitating trains – could be much more straightforward in future, as the origin of superconductivity in these materials has finally been identified.
Superconductors, materials which can carry electric current with zero resistance, could be used in a huge range of applications, but a lack of understanding about where their properties originate from has meant that the process of identifying new materials has been rather haphazard.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found that ripples of electrons, known as charge density waves or charge order, create twisted ‘pockets’ of electrons in these materials, from which superconductivity emerges. The results are published in the journal Nature.
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Image: Map of superconducting copper oxide structure.
Credit: Nicolle R Fuller
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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