Scientists identify first unusual superconductor found in nature

Scientists at the Ames National Laboratory in the USA were searching for superconducting materials that could conduct electricity without loss of energy. The first unusual superconductor whose chemical composition can also be found in nature. With this, myasite combines three other minerals that have superconducting properties in nature but when grown in the laboratory.

Unconventional superconductors are so named because, although they conduct electricity without resistance, they do not comply with the traditional theory of Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS) in 1957.explains superconductivity in nickel, lead, and mercury-based metals.

According to BCS, electrical conduction occurs in superconductors without loss of energy because their electrons can occupy the same quantum state and move together, allowing them to pass more easily through a pile of atoms.

Discovery of myiasite in nature

Co-author Ruslan Prozorov, a physicist at Iowa State University, explained in a statement that the biggest challenge in finding superconductors in nature is that most of these elements consist of metals that tend to react with oxygen and oxidize (lose electrons). . .

With its complex formula (Rh₁₇ S₁₅), myassite surprised researchers. “Intuitively you think this is something deliberately produced during focused research and cannot exist in nature.“Prozorov explains: “it just exists.” The fact that it can be synthesized in the laboratory makes myasite even more rare.

Although it would be naive to assume A piece of myicite found in nature has the purity required to function as an unusual superconductor.Its compounds precisely combine elements with a very high melting point (rhodium) and volatile elements (sulfur).

Three different tests were carried out to test the nature of the superconductivity of myassite; the most important of these was the “London penetration depth”, which indicates how far a weak magnetic field can penetrate the surface of the superconductor. This length is constant at low temperatures in conventional superconductors, but varies in unconventional ones. This is what happened in Miazit.

In another test, the team detected defects in the material’s crystal structure. Because unconventional superconductors have high sensitivity to defectsChanging or even suppressing its critical temperature. Here too, the myassite passed the test and behaved as predicted for unconventional superconductors.

When explaining superconductivity in conventional materials, conventional BCS theory has clear limitations in achieving high transition temperatures (the temperature at which the material becomes superconducting). Therefore, Prozorov says, the search for unconventional superconductors could be “the key to economically sound applications of superconductors.”

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