Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in superconductors: materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic fields are expelled from the material. 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.
High-temperature superconductivity is superconductivity in materials with a critical temperature above 77 K, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. They are only "high-temperature" relative to previously known superconductors, which function at colder temperatures, close to absolute zero. The "high temperatures" are still far below ambient, and therefore require cooling. The first breakthrough of high-temperature superconductor was discovered in 1986 by IBM researchers Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller. Although the critical temperature is around 35.1 K, this new type of superconductor was readily modified by Ching-Wu Chu to make the first high-temperature superconductor with critical temperature 93 K. Bednorz and Müller 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.
Paul Ching Wu Chu is a Chinese-American physicist specializing in superconductivity, magnetism, and dielectrics. He is a professor of physics and T.L.L. Temple Chair of Science in the Physics Department at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. He was the president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from 2001 to 2009. In 1987, he was one of the first scientists to demonstrate high-temperature superconductivity.
The Woodstock of physics was the popular name given by physicists to the marathon session of the American Physical Society’s meeting on March 18, 1987, which featured 51 presentations of recent discoveries in the science of high-temperature superconductors. Various presenters anticipated that these new materials would soon result in revolutionary technological applications, but in the three subsequent decades, this proved to be overly optimistic. The name is a reference to the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Festival.
Superconductivity is the phenomenon of certain materials exhibiting zero electrical resistance and the expulsion of magnetic fields below a characteristic temperature. The history of superconductivity began with Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's discovery of superconductivity in mercury in 1911. Since then, many other superconducting materials have been discovered and the theory of superconductivity has been developed. These subjects remain active areas of study in the field of condensed matter physics.
Marvin Lou Cohen is an American–Canadian theoretical physicist. He is a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Cohen is a leading expert in the field of condensed matter physics. He is widely known for his seminal work on the electronic structure of solids.
David C. Larbalestier is an American scientist who has contributed to research in superconducting materials for magnets and power applications. He is currently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a member of the Applied Superconductivity Center at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, and serves as the Interim Chair of the new Material Science and Engineering Department in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. He also holds emeritus status in the Materials Science and Engineering department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which was his academic home until 2006.
Juan Carlos Campuzano is a Paraguayan American physicist. He is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was a Distinguished Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, and a he is also a 2001 American Physical Society Fellow and a recipient of the 2011 Oliver Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics. He is an expert in high-temperature superconductivity.
Eugene Michael Chudnovsky is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at Lehman College and a member of the doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Chudnovsky is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), elected 1993 for "seminal contributions to random ferromagnetism, macroscopic quantum tunneling, and hexatic order in high Tc materials". He is mostly known for his work on quantum tunneling of magnetization. Chudnovsky explained magnetic avalanches experimentally observed in molecular magnets as deflagration.
Alexander V. Balatsky is a USSR-born American physicist. He is the professor of theoretical physics at NORDITA and University of Connecticut. He served as the founding director of the Institute for Materials Science (IMS) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2014–2017.
Jean-Marie Tarascon FRSC is Professor of Chemistry at the Collège de France in Paris and Director of the French Research Network on Electrochemical Energy Storage (RS2E).
Nai Phuan Ong is an American experimental physicist, specializing in "condensed matter physics focusing on topological insulators, Dirac/Weyl semimetals, superconductors and quantum spin liquids."
John F. Mitchell is an American chemist and researcher. He is the deputy director of the materials science division at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and leads Argonne's Emerging Materials Group.
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.
Zlatko Boško Tešanović was an Yugoslav-American theoretical condensed-matter physicist, whose work focused mainly on the high-temperature superconductors (HTS) and related materials.
William P. Halperin is a Canadian-American physicist, academic, and researcher. He is the Orrington Lunt Professor of Physics at Northwestern University.
Alexander Avraamovitch Golubov is a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, associate professor at the University of Twente (Netherlands). He specializes in condensed matter physics with the focus on theory of electronic transport in superconducting devices. He made key contributions to theory of Josephson effect in novel superconducting materials and hybrid structures, and to theory of multiband superconductivity.
Dale J. Van Harlingen was an American condensed matter physicist.
Pengcheng Dai is a Chinese American experimental physicist and academic. He is the Sam and Helen Worden Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University.
