When they were discovered superconductors in 1911, the scientists responsible for the find warned that they had some limitations. For example, it was impossible to obtain superconductors in which electrons flowed. in one direction. Initially this didn’t seem like a problem. However, when it was discovered supercomputers, the fact that it was impossible turned out to be a bummer. Although only so far, since a group of scientists from Delft University of Technology just proved it’s hard, but not impossible. In fact, they managed to develop unidirectional superconductors at the nanometer level.
However, it remains to be seen whether it can be extrapolated to larger chips for use in supercomputers. However, the very fact that he managed to direct the electrons of his superconductors in one direction is already a great achievement, which marks the “before” and “after” in the history of mankind. era of superconductivity. And why not? Possibly in supercomputers.
And the fact is that thanks to superconductors it is possible to transport energy no losswhich can not only help improve communication or get much faster supercomputers. would also be a great option. more respect for the planet. Moreover, as the authors of the study, which has just been published in Nature in a statement, the use of superconductors instead of traditional semiconductors could protect up to 10% of all Western energy reserves. This is another good reason to improve them, as these scientists did.
What are superconductors?
Superconductors are those that can conduct electricity without resistance and therefore, no energy loss.
semiconductors which are commonly used in cables such as copper or silverThey offer less and less resistance as the temperature drops. However, they contain impurities that prevent the resistance from reaching 0.
However, in 1911 the Dutch physicist Camerling Onnes discovered that there are materials in which, after sufficient cooling, the resistance disappears. This assumes that current can flow without energy loss, without load. But this also entails problems, since the freedom with which the electrons move makes it impossible for them to move. channel behind travel in one direction.
What about supercomputers?
Long after this great discovery, in 1970sAmerican engineer Seymour Cray developed the first supercomputers. These are devices with much higher performance than conventional computers.
In fact, in 2021 it was possible to launch a supercomputer that ran on more than 415 petaflops. A flop is a unit used to measure the number of operations performed by a device per second. So in this case it was executing over 1000 trillion per second.
The first supercomputers were developed in the 1970s.
This is very convenient for calculations. very fast and accuratetherefore, they are useful machines in many applications, from climate simulation to stellar simulation, to medicine, and testing the aerodynamics of military aircraft.
This great speed, again, was achieved CPU cooling (CPU) computers to very low temperatures. Thus, electrical resistance and energy losses were reduced, which made it possible to optimize the operation of computers. It is logical that its developers thought about superconductors, discovered several decades earlier. However, the bidirectionality of the electric current made its use impossible.
The pleasure of achieving the impossible
It is true that it was impossible to achieve unidirectionality in supercomputers. But only if materials were used that obey the traditional laws of physics. Everything changed if you submitted the quantum physics on the stage.
For this reason, a group of physicists Mazhar Ali decided to use a quantum material called Nb3Br8. According to this scientist in an interview for a statement released by his university, it is “a two-dimensional graphene-like material that is supposed to contain pure electric dipole“.
This daunting task was solved using quantum materials.
Exactly what these dipoles achieve, guide the current in the direction marked by the electric field. Therefore, they decided to use it as a barrier and place it between two superconductors.
And just as they predicted, they achieved that, despite continuing to behave like superconductors, they only carried current in one direction. Still no power loss. They came across something that could work with supercomputers.
The era of superconductors
In science, it is very important that research be reproducible. That is, what is achieved in an experiment can be reproduced by other scientists elsewhere. That’s why, according to Ali, they made a lot of devices from scratch from different batches of materials.
“We find the same properties every time, even if measured on different machines in different countries by different people. This tells us that the result of the diode is derived from our combination of materials and not due to some false result of dirt, geometry, machine or user error or interpretation.”
Mazhar Ali, physicist and author of the study
The only limitation is that this procedure is currently running nanometer scale (very small). So their next step will be to see if it can be scaled up to the size needed to produce chips that can be used in supercomputers.
In addition, they must find a way to operate at a slightly higher temperature, at least above 77K (-196ºC)to be able to be easily cooled with liquid nitrogen.
If they reach these two steps, we will face the true age of superconductors. They have already achieved the impossible. These two factors are complex, but there is good reason to believe that they will work.
Source: Hiper Textual
