A new era of superconducting research: scientists discover "just right" materials
CTOnews.com, April 26 (Xinhua) Superconducting material is a kind of material that can conduct current without loss at low temperature, and it has a wide range of applications, such as producing super-strong magnetic fields or transmitting large currents. However, at present, all the known superconducting materials need to work at very low temperatures, which brings great difficulties to practical applications. As a result, scientists have been looking for materials that can maintain superconductivity at higher temperatures.
In recent years, a new type of superconducting material has attracted the attention of the scientific community, which is based on nickel compounds, known as nickel salts. According to CTOnews.com, there are many similarities between this material and copper-based compounds discovered in the 1980s, namely cuprate. However, after computer simulations and experimental studies, scientists at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria and several universities in Japan have found that there is a better superconducting material, a palladium-based compound called palladium salt (Palladates).
Palladium is a precious metal that lies below nickel in the periodic table. Scientists have found that the interaction between electrons in palladium salts is just right, neither too strong nor too weak, just in a "golden region" that enables them to reach higher superconducting transition temperatures. This means that palladium salts may be more suitable as superconductors than copper salts and nickel salts.
This important finding has been published in the journal physical Review KuaiBao. "We hope our results will promote experimental research," said Carsten Hurd, a professor of solid-state physics at the Vienna University of Technology. "if we can have a new and additional category of materials-palladium salts-to better understand superconductivity and create better superconducting materials, it will push the whole field of research forward."
