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Superconductor breakthrough...

Breaking Superconductor News

Let’s look at what’s being claimed, and how strong the evidence seems to be. The authors describe a lead-based copper-doped material, LK-99, which is made by first preparing a well-characterized mineral (lanarkite, Pb2(SO4)O) from lead oxide and lead sulfate. Separately, copper phosphide (Cu3P), another well-characterized compound, is also freshly prepared from elemental copper and phosphorus. These two substances are ground together in a 1:1 ratio and the mixture is sealed in a vacuum-evacuated quartz tube and heated to 925C, forming LK-99, which is Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O, a dark polycrystalline material. The structure is very similar to lead apatite, a well-characterized phosphate mineral, but its crystallographic unit cell is slightly smaller due to the substitution of particular lead atoms in its lattice by copper ones.

And it’s this effect on the compound’s structure, the authors believe, that leads to its extraordinary superconducting behavior. Honestly, “extraordinary” doesn’t get it across. We’ve been getting excited over the years about superconducting materials that don’t even quite have to be cooled with liquid nitrogen, and this stuff is claimed to superconduct all the way up to room temperature and indeed up past the boiling point of water. Its critical temperature is said to be 127C (!) The phrase “boiling-water superconductor” is not one that I had ever used until yesterday, trust me on that.

Viral New Superconductivity Claims Leave Many Scientists Skeptical

The LK-99 superconductor could be world changing or a total hoax. Here’s why you should care either way