New material offers lossless energy possibility

NEW YORK: US scientists say they have produced the first commercially accessible material that eliminates the loss of energy as electricity is conducted through a wire, a breakthrough that could mean more efficient computers and power grids, longerlasting batteries, improved highspeed trains, and more powerful nuclear fusion reactors.

A team of physicists, led by Ranga Dias at the University of Rochester, claim in a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature that they have created a new superconductor that can operate at room temperature and a much lower pressure than previously discovered superconducting materials.The ream reports that a rare earth metal called lutetium combined with hydrogen and nitrogen can conduct electricity without resistance at 21 degrees Celsius and around just 10,000 atmospheres of pressure.

Superconductors, which are materials that can conduct electric currents without any loss, have been considered extremely impractical because they typically need to be extremely cooled, to around minus 195 degrees Celsius, and subjected to extreme pressure to work.

“With this material, the dawn of ambient superconductivity and applied technologies has arrived,” the team said in a press release.

In 2020, the researchers had reported that they created a superconductor made up of a hydrogen, sulphur and carbon combination that operated at roughly room temperature. The catch was it only worked after being baked by a laser and crushed between the tips of two diamonds to a pressure greater than that found in the centre of the Earth, in a device known as a diamond anvil cell.

However, other researchers could not replicate the results and complained that the study’s recipe was vague and incomplete, while others found fault with the way the team measured the material’s magnetic behaviour, a key signature of superconductivity, reports Science magazine.

Finally, Nature retracted the paper in September 2022 over the objections of all its authors.

“I’ve lost some trust in what’s coming from that group,” James Hamlin, a professor of physics at the University of Florida told The New York Times.

Nonetheless, the new paper made it through the peer review process at the same journal.

Physicists are still not convinced, with many saying they wouldn’t commit a student to replicating the work unless the team shares samples and raw data.

Ashkan Salamat, a physicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and one of the study’s senior authors, says the raw data are available online. As for sharing samples, the paper provides a detailed recipe, he says. “People can go ahead and make it for themselves.”

SHUTTERSTOCK Superconductors are materials that can conduct electric currents without any loss.