Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases gradually as its temperature is lowered, even down to near absolute zero, a superconductor has a characteristic critical temperature below which the resistance drops abruptly to zero. An electric current through a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.
Unconventional superconductors are materials that display superconductivity which does not conform to either the conventional BCS theory or Nikolay Bogolyubov's theory or its extensions.
The Meissner effect is the expulsion of a magnetic field from a superconductor during its transition to the superconducting state when it is cooled below the critical temperature. This expulsion will repel a nearby magnet.
High-temperature superconductors are defined as materials that behave as superconductors at temperatures above 77 K, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. The adjective "high temperature" is only in respect to previously known superconductors, which function at even colder temperatures close to absolute zero. In absolute terms, these "high temperatures" are still far below ambient, and therefore require cooling. The first high-temperature superconductor was discovered in 1986, by IBM researchers Bednorz and Müller, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials". Most high-Tc materials are type-II superconductors.
A room-temperature superconductor is a material that is capable of exhibiting superconductivity at operating temperatures above 0 °C, that is, temperatures that can be reached and easily maintained in an everyday environment. As of 2020, the material with the highest claimed superconducting temperature is an extremely pressurized carbonaceous sulfur hydride with a critical transition temperature of +15 °C at 267 GPa. On 22 September 2022, the original article reporting superconductivity in the carbonaceous sulfur hydride material was retracted by Nature journal editorial board due to a non standard, user-defined data analysis, calling into question the scientific validity of the claim.
An ideally hard superconductor is a type II superconductor material with an infinite pinning force. In the external magnetic field it behaves like an ideal diamagnet if the field is switched on when the material is in the superconducting state, so-called "zero field cooled" (ZFC) regime. In the field cooled (FC) regime, the ideally hard superconductor screens perfectly the change of the magnetic field rather than the magnetic field itself. Its magnetization behavior can be described by Bean's critical state model.
Iron-based superconductors (FeSC) are iron-containing chemical compounds whose superconducting properties were discovered in 2006. In 2008, led by recently discovered iron pnictide compounds, they were in the first stages of experimentation and implementation..
In chemistry, oxypnictides are a class of materials composed of oxygen, a pnictogen and one or more other elements. Although this group of compounds has been recognized since 1995, interest in these compounds increased dramatically after the publication of the superconducting properties of LaOFeP and LaOFeAs which were discovered in 2006 and 2008. In these experiments the oxide was partly replaced by fluoride.
The 122 iron arsenide unconventional superconductors are part of a new class of iron-based superconductors. They form in the tetragonal I4/mmm, ThCr2Si2 type, crystal structure. The shorthand name "122" comes from their stoichiometry; the 122s have the chemical formula AEFe2Pn2, where AE stands for alkaline earth metal (Ca, Ba, Sr or Eu) and Pn is pnictide (As, P, etc.). These materials become superconducting under pressure and also upon doping. The maximum superconducting transition temperature found to date is 38 K in the Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2. The microscopic description of superconductivity in the 122s is yet unclear.
Superconducting wires are electrical wires made of superconductive material. When cooled below their transition temperatures, they have zero electrical resistance. Most commonly, conventional superconductors such as niobium-titanium are used, but high-temperature superconductors such as YBCO are entering the market.
The Fulde–Ferrell–Larkin–Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase can arise in a superconductor in large magnetic field. Among its characteristics are Cooper pairs with nonzero total momentum and a spatially non-uniform order parameter, leading to normal conducting areas in the superconductor.
Frozen mirror image method is an extension of the method of images for magnet-superconductor systems that has been introduced by Alexander Kordyuk in 1998 to take into account the magnetic flux pinning phenomenon. The method gives a simple representation of the magnetic field distribution generated by a magnet outside an infinitely flat surface of a perfectly hard type-II superconductor in more general field cooled (FC) case, i.e. when the superconductor goes into superconducting state been already exposed to the magnetic field. The difference from the mirror image method, which deals with a perfect type-I superconductor, is that the perfectly hard superconductor screens the variation of the external magnetic field rather than the field itself.
Distrontium ruthenate, also known as strontium ruthenate, is an oxide of strontium and ruthenium with the chemical formula Sr2RuO4. It was the first reported perovskite superconductor that did not contain copper. Strontium ruthenate is structurally very similar to the high-temperature cuprate superconductors, and in particular, is almost identical to the lanthanum doped superconductor (La, Sr)2CuO4. However, the transition temperature for the superconducting phase transition is 0.93 K (about 1.5 K for the best sample), which is much lower than the corresponding value for cuprates.
Iron(II) selenide refers to a number of inorganic compounds of ferrous iron and selenide (Se2−). The phase diagram of the system Fe–Se reveals the existence of several non-stoichiometric phases between ~49 at. % Se and ~53 at. % Fe, and temperatures up to ~450 °C. The low temperature stable phases are the tetragonal PbO-structure (P4/nmm) β-Fe1−xSe and α-Fe7Se8. The high temperature phase is the hexagonal, NiAs structure (P63/mmc) δ-Fe1−xSe. Iron(II) selenide occurs naturally as the NiAs-structure mineral achavalite.
Several hundred metals, compounds, alloys and ceramics possess the property of superconductivity at low temperatures. The SU(2) color quark matter adjoins the list of superconducting systems. Although it is a mathematical abstraction, its properties are believed to be closely related to the SU(3) color quark matter, which exists in nature when ordinary matter is compressed at supranuclear densities above ~ 0.5 1039 nucleon/cm3.
Richard L. Greene is an American physicist. He is a distinguished university professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. He is known for his experimental research related to novel superconducting and magnetic materials.
Carbonaceous sulfur hydride is a purported room-temperature superconductor that was announced in October 2020. The material is claimed to have a maximal superconducting transition temperature of 15 °C (59 °F) at a pressure of 267 gigapascals (GPa), though the validity of the claim has faced criticism. In September 2022 the article was retracted by Nature journal editorial board due to a non standard, user-defined data analysis calling into question the scientific validity of the claim.
Yurii Georgiyovych Naidyuk is a Ukrainian physicist, Director of the B.I. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is a corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU). He has been awarded the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology and the B. I. Verkin Prize of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Low Temperature Physics.
Anatolie S. Sidorenko is a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences and professor at the Technical University of Moldova. He specializes in condensed matter physics with the focus on electronic transport and magnetic properties of low dimensional systems – thin films and layered superconductors, design of superconducting devices and sensors. He made key contributions to investigation of novel superconducting materials and hybrid structures superconductor-ferromagnet, multiband and triplet superconductivity.
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