US was stated to enter an implausible new epoch of technology in the year 1987 by Ronald Reagan. A new genre of materials dubbed high temperature superconductors (HTSC) were set to make high-speed trains, super-efficient power generators and ultra-powerful supercomputers a humdrum. But almost twenty years have gone and we haven’t come across the predictions. Why?
A brief history of Superconductivity:
Superconductivity was first revealed in 1911 by researchers at the University of Leiden who used solid mercury in their trials. But, the pioneering breakthrough was hit in the year 1986 when two IBM researchers, named Georg Bednorz and Alex Mueller, bared a new breed of ceramic superconductors, called the copper oxide perovskites, which operated at 35K (-238C). The major discovery led to a meeting of physicists in New York to talk about the findings, a meeting later on dubbed the “Woodstock of Physics”.
Where are we after long twenty years?
Anyhow, even after long research of twenty years, the fundamental system of superconductivity in the earthenware is still not clear-cut. Moreover, their precise structure that requires ultra-thin layers of dissimilar elements piled on top of each other, implies that they are very complicated and exclusive to make. Professor Paul Chu, University of Houston cited that ‘the material was not as simple as we originally thought.’
The technology in use:
Fortunately, some of the companies in Japan, Europe, China, South Korea and the US are moving ahead with such application.
•In the States, a firm named American Superconductor has devised a technique to “bend the unbendable”, developing HTSC wires that can carry 150 times more electricity than the corresponding copper cables.
•Central Japan Railways employs coils for their superconducting investigational magnetic levitation (maglev) train.
•American Superconductor has also developed an electric motor by means of coils of superconducting wires for usage in the next-generation of US Navy destroyers.
•Other than that, the firm ready to initiate testing its most recent 36.5-megawatt engine that is cooled by off-the-shelf liquid helium refrigerators and has a weight of 75 tones.
New ray of hope:
For now, the things seem to be moving in the right direction. Many novel superconductors have been found including a mercury-based amalgam that has a transition temperature of 134K (-139C). Professor Chu said:
When we applied pressure we raised it up to 164K (-109C) - that’s a record. Of course from an application point of view, it’s hopeless.
But many other researches have brought a ray of hope for the discovery of room temperature superconductors that would necessitate no foreign cooling equipment. I think that the ‘new age’ of which Ronald Reagan predicted, is about to debut.
Via: BBC
