Exotic new superconductors delight and confound(quantamagazine.org) |
Exotic new superconductors delight and confound(quantamagazine.org) |
Tungsten disulfide/boron nitride superconductors? That's a new direction.
This article describes a new research result as a new research result, not as "trillion dollar industry by 2027". That helps credibility.
A large part of the field of 2D materials is just trying stuff.
:)
I don't like that language either, but it may be wise to understand that different audiences are reading this, and it may be effective for the author to reach the others in this way. And besides, in general it's easier for a rationalist to ignore such language than it is for an industrialist to add it.
Some so-called "high temperature" superconductors begin superconducting at liquid-nitrogen temperature or higher. However in real life applications like MRI and particle accelerators it turned out that they still need to be cooled with much colder liquid helium to get the desired magnetic field tolerance, current-carrying capacity etc. Finding a high-quality liquid-nitrogen-grade superconductor with these desired properties would be a revolution in itself.
I've read of them being used in wind turbines and particle accelerators, as well as concepts for fusion reactors.
Your comment makes it sound like they have insufficient field tolerance / current characteristics though. I don't think I've heard about Cuprates at all recently.
Maybe (cheap) room-temp superconductors won't actually be that interesting (maybe it just increases energy transmission efficiency 5-10%), but perhaps it's availability catalises a whole range of new applications that were never considered before.
Even if it doesn't meet those requirements, room temperature superconductors will have immense value in low-power applications, micro electronics, sensing, etc.
Interesting, then, that the article actually mentions a superconductor that got stronger in the presence of a magnet! Wild things we're learning here!
E.g. MRIs still use NiTi (critical temperature of ~10 kelvins), discovered in 1962, for a number of reasons (this is in spite of MgB2 having a critical T of ~39k, ReBCO with a critical T of ~90k, and BSCCO with a critical T of ~108k):
> In this paper, we analyze conductor requirements for commercial MRI magnets beyond traditional NbTi conductors, while avoiding links to a particular magnet configuration or design decisions. Potential conductor candidates include MgB2, ReBCO and BSCCO options. The analysis shows that no MRI-ready non-NbTi conductor is commercially available at the moment. For some conductors, MRI specifications will be difficult to achieve in principle. For others, cost is a key barrier. In some cases, the prospects for developing an MRI-ready conductor are more favorable, but significant developments are still needed. The key needs include the development of... [omitted]
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5472374/
Unfortunately, it probably won't be as simple as "step 1 discover material, step 2 manufacture, step 3 profit".
Resistive losses are just one of very many attributes of a conductor. Others important attributes include:
- current capacity (will you need humongously thick wires to match charge carried by aluminum or copper?)
- ductility (can it be formed into wires cheaply?)
- cost (does CapEx outweigh electricity savings? is it expensive enough that people will cut and steal it?)
- weight (can it hang from power poles? can it be transported on the backs of trucks?)
- temperature sensitivity (does it crack at low temperature? melt at high temperature? change electrical properties depending on the weather? stop conducting on hot days?)
- chemical stability (will it oxidize over a 50-year lifecycle?)
- toxicity (will kids be poisoned if they touch it / eat it?)
- machinability (can it be formed into tiny wires? can it be patterned onto chips?)
- electromigration resistance (will the material break down over time from carrying charge?)
- tensile strength (can it be hung from power poles at their current spacing? would we need to rip out all power poles across the planet? would we need more expensive underground lines?)
- abundance in the Earth's crust (will the price skyrocket if we suddenly need to produce an annual megaton to replace the world's powerlines?)
- geographic concentration (are the primary deposits concentrated in a single country, introducing potential supply chain and geosecurity risks?)
- etc.
It's very likely that the first material which does better on resistivity is going to do worse on these other dimensions. Resistivity is rarely the number one criterion in selecting conductors, from power lines to computer chips.
One of the reason incumbent technologies are difficult to replace is that they win on criteria that are less salient to potential innovators. Aluminum is a common metal for power lines not because it has the lowest resistivity, but because it's by far the best we've got when evaluating this whole portfolio of needs.
What makes me particularly optimistic is the wide range of scenarios in which superconductivity is observed (also highlighted in the article); different mechanisms leading to a similar result suggests much better opportunity for the existence of a room-temp SC than if it were a highly similar pattern.
Certainly such a discovery has some serendipity and luck baked in, but given these advances across the board, 5-10 years seems like a reasonable bet (then another decade or two to widespread adoption). Let's hope we don't blow everything up before then.
_experimentalists are still the ones leading the way. “Everyone’s rushing as fast as they can,” Yankowitz said._
In my experience, the final line is what contributes to my optimism most:
_“I can’t believe that we’re six years in and you can’t take a break.”_
Reality is too noisy for such effects to take hold. If there was I think evolution would have already used it by now.
So a 1m3 7T magnetic field would be about 20MJ or 7KWh. That doesn't sound like much, but collapse times could be microsec to generate GW of EM.
If you ever wonder why these products using graphene aren’t commercially viable, it is insanely difficult to work with and prepare. Imagine trying to make a sandwich that’s 5x5 microns in area and about 2-3nm thick. Graphene is essentially atomic tissue paper subject to all sorts of contamination and small scale effects.
I came across another technique discovered many years ago, where they used scotch tape to alter the physical configuration of the material to make it superconduct. At room temperature, I believe.
This all sounds very ground breaking to me, yet we don’t hear about any big co doing any work on them.
Could reaction permutation and property testing occur in a more automated fashion than is currently?
High temperature superconductors are only seeing commercial use in the last few years (after their discovery in the 80s) due to issues like poor ductility.
Transmission lines are a great example of competing demands. Copper is a better conductor so why do we use aluminium? Because of weight. And weight is a huge factor in supporting large cables over long distances.
Metals are also ductile, which is important for a cable to hang in gravity under its own weight, be moved by the wind and so on. Assumedly exotic crystals wouldn't have this property. Even if they could, what would the weight be? Would the cross-section need to be much larger? Particular to this family of superconductors, tungsten isn't exactly the easiest thing to do deal with, particularly on a massive scale.
There's an interesting Reddit thread about this topic [1]. One issue it raises is we'd need to essentiaally rebuild our entire infrastructure and transformers are a big part of that.
Personally, I think energy is going to get an awful lot more local. Solar is our future (IMHO). The ability to store excess power generated during the day and then use it when it's dark or cloudy will obviate the need to expensive long-line transmission infrasturcture from distant power plants.
Lastly, the GP is correct: liquid nitrogen is incredibly cheap. It's basically the cost of drinking water. Getting something we could use at liquid nitrogen cooling temperatures would be incredibly impactful.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/12etlkr/wouldnt...
https://www.caiso.com/documents/2023-special-report-on-batte...
The voltage can be substantially lowered, because high currents don't lead to high losses; the current may be made as high as practical, near to the limit of the material's superconducting state.
Hold on, what? How?? Reaching that temperature seems like a difficult task; and what's used as a source of pure nitrogen, anyway? Is there some clever trick to separating it out from the air?