Microsoft is currently looking at high-temperature superconductors (HTS) for transmitting the massive amounts of electricity that it needs for its data centers. According to the company blog, since superconductors have zero resistance, adoption of that exotic tech would mean that the HTS cables would not suffer voltage drops or generate heat as electricity travels through them.

The advantages of HTS cables means that they can be lighter and take up less space compared to traditional copper and aluminum wires. For example, overhead lines typically need 70 meters of space to prevent the electrical fields of the individual cables from interfering with each other, among other reasons. HTS cables, on the other hand, only requires a 2-meter-wide trench.

HTS has been studied for several decades now, but it seems that recent advancements have made it more viable to deploy at scale. The biggest challenge that this technology faces is the cryogenic technology required to keep the conductors at their optimal temperature. Classic elemental superconductors, like mercury, need to operate below 10 Kelvin — that’s around -263 degrees C or less than -440 degrees F. And even though HTS do not need to stay as cool as traditional ones, conductors made with those materials still require temperatures around -200 degrees C or less than -320 degrees F.

As Mark Zuckerberg predicted a couple of years ago, power constraints are one of the biggest constraints hampering AI growth. Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that the company has idle AI GPUs in its inventory because it did not have enough electricity to install them all.

AI data centers’ massive demand for power has started affecting ordinary users, with politicians taking notice of the toll it has put on ordinary Americans. Because of this, President Donald Trump has called on AI tech companies to “pay their own way” when it comes to their power consumption.

Microsoft was the first AI hyperscaler to respond to this promising the public that it will follow its “Community-First AI Infrastructure” framework when building its data centers. The company’s first and biggest promise in this framework is “We’ll pay our way to ensure our datacenters don’t increase your electricity prices.” This means that the company will have to spend more to carry the burden of investing in the power plants and other infrastructure required for its planned data centers. But aside from just building more and more power lines and facilities, Microsoft has apparently decided that it wants to reduce the waste brought about by inefficiencies in the system

It seems that data centers’ massive electrical demand is making HTS technology economically viable to deploy, especially if it will reduce the massive amounts of space that substations and other conventional power infrastructure require. More importantly, it would allow Microsoft to build more data centers without needing more electricity from the grid as it’s still working on the research and development of small-modular reactors (which isn’t even guaranteed to work). If high-temperature superconductors become viable, it would be yet another example of the mind-boggling economics of AI expanding the frontiers of every part of the technology stack.

Researchers at NYU and the University of Queensland have demonstrated superconductivity in gallium-doped epitaxial germanium, fabricated using industry-standard semiconductor tools. The new material switches to a superconducting state below 3.5 Kelvin and supports dense, wafer-scale Josephson junction arrays, an important building block for quantum and cryogenic RF circuits.

The team’s prototype demonstrates millions of superconducting junctions integrated on a single 2-inch wafer. Junctions were lithographically defined and electrically characterized at low temperatures, confirming both superconducting behavior and practical current densities for device integration.

The process relies on molecular beam epitaxy to grow ultra-clean germanium films with gallium dopants inserted directly into substitutional lattice sites. At sufficiently high doping concentrations, the films undergo a bulk superconducting transition. Crucially, the interface remains epitaxial and free of disordered interlayers, which are known to degrade junction performance in hybrid stacks.

The work marks a significant shift from small-batch, layered superconductors toward scalable wafer-level integration on semiconductor-grade substrates. Because the doped Ge films are grown using the same epitaxial techniques used in compound semiconductor and cryo-CMOS production, the platform should be theoretically compatible with existing foundry workflows.

Superconducting qubit arrays and cryogenic microwave front-ends today depend on complex packaging steps to integrate semiconducting control logic with superconducting interconnects. Embedding both domains into a monolithic stack removes key bottlenecks in parasitic capacitance, thermal anchoring, and interconnect reliability, which currently limit performance in high-density quantum systems.

The researchers also emphasize the uniformity of their junction fabrication, showing highly consistent critical current densities across large areas. While the transition temperature remains firmly cryogenic, the manufacturability shift opens the door to wider deployment in quantum computing, low-noise detection, and space-based cryo-RF applications.

For now, the focus turns to larger wafers, reproducibility across fabrication nodes, and coupling between superconducting Ge films and conventional on-wafer logic. If follow-up work confirms these properties, superconducting Ge may offer a pragmatic route to scalable quantum interconnects.

Researchers at Cornell have developed a new method of 3D printing that aims to improve the performance of superconductors. The new process manages to break records and shows promising alternative options for compound superconductor manufacturing. The team believes the technology can aid in fields that are particularly demanding, resource-wise, such as quantum computing.

The manufacturing process isn't exclusively handled by 3D printing, but 3D printing is a core component of the workflow. The team began by 3D printing a copolymer-inorganic nanoparticle ink onto a surface. The ink was then subjected to heat, which caused the ink to transform into what was described by the team as a "porous crystalline superconductor".

A startup has just emerged from stealth mode, heralding its development and fabrication of a prototype superconducting processor for AI. The company, Extropic, recently closed a $14.1 million seed funding round, and claims it will achieve a goal of creating AI accelerators "that are many orders of magnitude faster and more energy efficient than digital processors (CPUs/GPUs/TPUs/FPGAs)." The firm, led by ex-Alphabet X quantum researcher Guillaume Verdon, has also published its "Litepaper" brief offering a tantalizing glimpse of the full-stack thermodynamic hardware platform it is building.

Extropic argues that currently available digital processors are not a good match for AI acceleration. The paper introduces a novel probabilistic paradigm of computing that is said to be distanced from increasingly complex pristine digital computers in favor of something more 'biological' and 'noisy'. Extropic's prototype passive thermodynamic chips run the type of probabilistic algorithms used in AI physically, as a rapid and energy-efficient physics-based process. This makes them much more suitable for current AI algorithms than traditional computing processors, which rather unnaturally try to embrace probability and uncertainty - introducing inefficiency.

There are many more discussions about the science behind Extropic's "revolutionary approach to AI acceleration through thermodynamic computing" in the paper. However, we were most interested to see the firm's demo chip, to hear how it works, and what it can do. In the image above you can see a microscope image of one of the first Extropic chip neuron designs. These chips are said to be nano-fabricated from aluminum and run at low temperatures so they are superconducting. 

You can see two Josephson Junctions highlighted in the photo, and these should be adept transistor-style components for the types of complex non-linear problems faced by AI. What we see is just a small processor building block that will be used alongside many other linear and non-linear neurons in larger supercomputing systems.

That all might sound highly ambitious, but Extropic is also readying semiconductor devices that operate at room temperature to extend its reach to a larger and more immediate market opportunity. These devices will use transistors in the place of the Josephson Junctions, sacrificing energy efficiency but enabling the possibility of a GPU-like expansion card. Besides the hardware, Extropic is busy with software that interprets the abstract specifications of Energy-Based Models (EBMs) to its processors.

Helping founder Verdon achieve the above-outlined goals is a team of experts with prior experience at companies like Alphabet, AWS, Meta, IBM, and Nvidia. Let's hope we will hear more from Extropic in the near future.

In the everlasting search for economically viable superconductors, a variety of scientists and researchers have published findings on naturally occurring mineral miassite as an "unconventional superconductor." These findings ("Nodal superconductivity in miassite") were published for Open Access viewing on Nature.com and include contributors from a variety of US universities, as well as institutions in France and New Zealand.

Unlike semiconductors, which are still integral to the overwhelming majority of modern electronics, superconductors conduct electricity with 100% efficiency, not losing any power (typically released as heat) in the process. They can also create permanent magnetic fields. This makes viable superconductors a golden goose, should anyone ever actually achieve the seemingly impossible goal of finding or creating a material that behaves this way at or near typical room temperature.

Finding a superconductor in a naturally occurring mineral (with some caveats, of course) as detailed in this paper is a step in the right direction for this research. According to the paper, miassite functions as a superconductor at 5.4 degrees Kelvin, or -449 degrees Fahrenheit. So clearly there will still need to be some major temperature lowering involved.

Miassite is a mineral that can be both found in nature and synthesized in a lab. In its clean synthetic form, it is the only mineral so far that exhibits unconventional superconductivity. The form found in nature may be capable of this, but researchers note that it is unlikely because of "unavoidable impurities that quickly destroy nodal superconductivity."

Additional statements on the paper from Ames National Laboratory (which participated in the original paper) elaborate that "uncovering the mechanisms behind unconventional superconductivity is key to economically sound applications of superconductors." The full paper details how the research team evaluated miassite to come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, a viable superconductor. 

The reason it took so long for this discovery to come about is because of the aforementioned impurities that naturally occur in the mineral as it appears in nature. Near the end of the paper, the researchers note that "nature knows how to hide its secrets"— fortunately, lots of educated and talented humans enjoy uncovering those same secrets.

While sometimes-dubious claims like room-temperature superconductivity or field-tunable superconductors remain a hot-button point of debate, the discovery of a (mostly) naturally occurring superconductor offers a promising new angle for future superconductor advancements.

Two independent teams of researchers hailing from several universities in China and Japan have published new results on LK-99 that seemingly confirm the presence of room-temperature superconductivity. Uploaded to Cornell's pre-print (and thus not-formally-peer-reviewed) scientific publications server Arxiv, the joint paper describes a slightly different formulation of the original LK-99 formula - one which leads the abstract to end with a relatively muted "Our experiment suggests at room temperature the Meissner effect is possibly present in this material."

The Meissner effect, being one of the design secrets for superconductivity (corresponding to an emergent magnetic field that typically repels all others), is but one of the reasons their paper is important, even as it joins other research and patent updates asserting LK-99's superconductivity with increasing probability.

The paper owes much of its weight to its methodology as well. Both teams publicly tried to achieve an LK-99-like room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor, but used distinct synthesis and analysis processes. One team, headed by Yao Yao, used solid-state synthesis to cook their samples (the method described in the original LK-99 paper and the one whose replication attempts by renowned worldwide institutions previously failed to hold up to scrutiny) and subjected them to EPR (Electron Paramagnetic Resonance) to gauge their magnetic behavior. The other team, headed by Hongyang Wang, used hydrothermal synthesis and applied SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) measurements. Ultimately, both teams managed to fabricate samples that they claimed showcased the Meissner effect.

By studying the samples' magnetization as a function of temperature (also known as the M-T curve), they were able to plot out the samples' behavior when subjected to an external magnetic field while cooled at different temperature levels, which resulted in the sample repelling it (translated in the function graph as negative magnetization) across at least the 100 K (-173.15 ºC), 200 K (-73.15 ºC), and 250 K (-23.15 ºC) temperature band, with a possible up to 300 K (26.85 ºC) maintenance of the superconductive state.

That's what the behavior of a room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor is supposed to look like, and even if there's a hard limit at 250 K (-23.15 ºC), that's a high-enough temperature that there's a category of freezers to come to our aid: laboratory-grade ultra-low temperature freezers, which are usually deployed for keeping vaccines, blood, and tissue samples at temperatures as low as - 80 ºC (200 K).

According to the paper, the teams fabricated modified samples of copper-doped lead apatite (with a chemical formulation of Pb9.1Cu0.9(PO4)6S)) that's different from the original recipe - a confirmation that part of the issue with replicating LK-99's superconductive behavior likely stemmed from ineffective substitutions of elements while in the cooking phase (we covered how the badly documented synthesis and doping processes might be key to the LK-99 drama).

The "meticulous" synthesis procedure involves heating a phosphate and lead sulfide solution under high pressures (while keeping the pH at a basic 8), followed by calcination of the samples (at 900 ºC for 8 hours), followed by another calcination procedure in a pure-oxygen atmosphere for 48 hours (at a reduced 500 ºC). It's perhaps easy to see how a quantum-chemistry fabrication procedure such as this, as meticulous but error-prone as it apparently is, could possibly be achieved in the kitchen of a Russian biologist. However, the paper is quick to assert that even with the fabrication method, sample viability is difficult - signs point towards the possibility of LK-99 being a Type-II superconductor, where only a small subset of the substance showcases superconductivity.

As we've previously seen, Type-II superconductors tend to have superconductive materials (which are their own phase of matter) mixed in with other types of materials (which display their own resistivity properties), creating tensions - literal magnetic vortices - where both areas intersect. In type-II superconductors, these vortices tend to increase as the conditions become sub-optimal for the superconducting phase of matter to emerge, leading to an eventual collapse of the superconducting state (you may put this in the same box as that of qubits decohering in quantum computing as a result of external stressors). 

As per the paper, even samples synthesized following the current best-known process (the one they employed) tend to have a high percentage of non-superconducting matter mixed in with the purportedly superconducting bits. In that scenario, it's easy to wrongfully declare samples as dead even after testing them. According to a conversation in a public forum attributed to the two lead authors, one of the superconductive samples they based their paper on was fabricated back in November of 2023, determined to be a dud, and was about to be trashed at multiple points of its life. Ultimately, the fabrication process is still horribly inefficient and isn't something we'd currently bother to scale (assuming the superconductivity thesis holds).

Understandably, perhaps, the authors seem to be unwilling to stir much trouble just yet (and they do end their abstract with a sentence that's as filled with defensiveness as with "suggestions" and "possibilities"). The two separate but co-authoring teams of scientists also attempted to placate doubts further by seemingly reproducing each other's results. That's not airtight, but it's hoped that the improved synthetization recipe will now allow other researchers to replicate these results.

Copper-substituted lead apatite, as the compound is known, was all the rage back in the summer of 2023 - when it was first hailed as a "room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor" by Lee and others. And it's only natural that a sentence such as that would result in a hype-wave - if there's something humanity as a collective should be excited about, it's the emergence of a material that can wastelessly conduct electricity. A superconductor that doesn't need to see above Earth's core pressure levels and/or be impractically-chilled to perform its job? One that could potentially be deployed across applications ranging from tiny quantum sensors through lossless energy storage?

That's the holy grail of condensed matter physics - and a reason why this research area has already had its share of purportedly false idols and faked data. That fact also might have had something to do with Nature's decision to stamp the LK-99 story as being over. Yet fumaroles seem to keep popping up around copper-doped lead apatite - and where there's smoke, there's usually fire. Either LK-99 (and more or less Sulfur-heavy-derivatives) is a result of collectively mistaken condensed matter physicists playing with the Internet's expectations across time, or something might truly be floating with LK-99. Whether that translates as the first room-temperature superconductor or simply as an object lesson in what little we still know about the universe is currently still open. But isn't that possibility exciting by itself?

A group of physicists from the University of Washington and the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) have seemingly discovered a new, controllable variation of superconductivity in an exotic, crystal-like material. Its superconductivity can be modulated according to the strain applied to it, to the point of turning it off at will. Simultaneously, they've apparently broken the record on how "hot" a field-effect superconductor can be before it loses its ability to conduct electricity, absent any resistance. 

The time hasn't yet come for the room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor, but a temperature record is a temperature record, even if it's (still) around the 10 K barrier (-263.5 ºC).

The research paper (published in Science Advances) describes a synthetic, crystal-like sandwich of both ferromagnetic (Europium) and superconductive materials (Iron Arsenide), which showcase emergent superconductivity when placed in the proximity of a strong enough magnetic field. Doped EuFe2As2, as the material is called due to the addition of Cobalt molecules to the synthesis process, takes advantage of Europium's (Eu) strong ferromagnetism, alternated with superconducting/nematic FeAs (Iron Arsenide) layers in a sandwich-like configuration.

The result is what's known as a field-tunable superconductor -- one whose superconductivity features can be enabled through the application of external magnetic fields. In the case of doped EuFe2As2 (and by deploying specialized equipment alongside a combination of X-ray techniques), the research team showed how a properly aligned external magnetic field counterbalances the magnetic fields emanating from the ferromagnetic Europium layers. This allows them to be reoriented - and once the originally chaotic magnetic fields are parallel to the superconducting ones, a zero-resistance state of matter emerges.

But doped EuFe2As2 has another secret: its superconducting capabilities can be turned off even in a strong enough magnetic field. All that's needed is to strain the material with a cryogenic strain cell - to apply pressure from a single side (uniaxially)  with what's akin to an industrial, scientific-measurements-certified piston -- to modulate how much resistance electrons find while traversing it. Under certain strain levels, the superconductivity of the synthetic material can be boosted enough so that an external magnetic field isn't required to enable a superconductive state. But after a point, not even pressure gets the engines going. Two different mechanisms for superconductivity can only go so far, but they also open up several opportunities in customizing superconductivity -- an additional lever to pull.

The researchers noted difficulties in their synthesis process despite the overwhelming quality of documentation (they did it themselves, after all). The research team wasn't able to discern what prevented viable samples of Cobalt-doped EuFe2As2 from resulting from the synthesis process; instead, they reported "substantial sample to sample variability," where variability refers to whether the samples presented field-induced superconductivity or not. The researchers further noted the difficulties likely arose in the Cobalt doping stage of the recipe, a confirmation of how difficult it is to control quantum processes (such as chemical reactions) at the level of precision some of these synthetic materials that are bearers of superconductivity require.

These are subtle, subatomic element changes and interactions -- that's truly all that's required for morphing a material from semiconductivity to superconductivity. But that simpleness hides a complex interaction of elements, particles and subatomic particles, spins, magnetic fields, and many more parameters in a way that's just right - or in the case of the researcher's samples, between 4 Kelvin and 10 Kelvin of rightness.

This level of resolution and control into the moment superconductivity gets "turned off" (which is the same as the moment it gets "turned on" but different, in a very quantum way) should provide invaluable insights into the quantum physics of superconducting. At the very least, the newly discovered superconductor can be a testbed for a better understanding of superconductivity itself -- being able to see the molecular transition from normal matter to its superconductive phase at higher and higher resolutions should increase our ability to control the effect and extract further usefulness from it. 

And if anything, the book in condensed matter physics still has several blank pages to pour discoveries onto, this novel superconducting mechanism included. Not that it's hard to imagine places where perfectly-conducting circuits that never heat up would be great: Argonne National Labs states that this discovery could "find uses in superconducting circuits for next-generation industrial electronics." I'll take a Ryzen 15 Super Cooper, please.

You might think that LK-99 was this year's mark of shame on the superconductor world (although things are a bit more complicated than that). But the truth is that that particular blip in the radar of materials science is hardly the front-runner for its 2023 calendar.

Today, Nature announced the retraction of yet another one of Ranga Dias' (and co-authors') papers on room temperature superconductivity — the third mark of scientific suspicion on his work (conducted with the University of Rochester in New York) and that of physicist Ashkan Salamat at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Scientists are concerned that the field's reputation is being frayed by these hiccups.

Ranga Dias wasn't alone — there were several co-authors on each of his papers, so it becomes difficult to ascertain responsibility, chain of trust, or even the moment that errors (some too questionable to be mere oversights) were inserted into the papers. But today's retraction sees an uneven split between researchers. Out of the eleven authors of the original (and now retracted) paper on hydride superconductivity, eight of them submitted the retraction notice: it seems that the questions surrounding the results were doing more harm than what benefits could be had from the publication. Ranga Dias was one of the holdouts, and continues to deny wrongdoing. 

As the retraction note clarifies, "[the eight co-authors] have expressed the view as researchers who contributed to the work that the published paper does not accurately reflect the provenance of the investigated materials, the experimental measurements undertaken and the data-processing protocols applied." It continues, adding that these co-authors "have concluded that these issues undermine the integrity of the published paper."

The original paper related to the claim of room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductivity being found in a hydride — hydrogen-based materials that feature an extra electron (technically making them anions), and one of the poster-boys for materials science and superconductivity research — as one of the most promising research venues. 

Multiple superconductors have been found in hydride-land since the first discovery back in 2015 — but most of them require pressures that are millions of times greater than atmospheric levels to attain superconductivity, severely limiting their applications.  A group led by physicist Mikhail Eremets at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, described a hydride that achieved superconductivity in a hydrogen–sulfur compound at −70 °C (203.15 Kelvin) — and 145 gigapascals of pressure (around 1.43 million times atmospheric pressure). Ranga Dias et al's hydride was described as achieving superconductivity at a much more palatable 10,000 times atmospheric pressure. If you want to count the orders of magnitude difference, go ahead.

For superconductors and condensed matter physics in general, the year has been particularly marked by what some are calling "a crisis of trust". This crisis of trust has a single reason: bad science. 

The issue with bad science is that science is hard enough already to replicate, even when everything goes according to plan. The requirements are theoretically simple: provide original work that is provable, verifiable, and independently replicable under the same circumstances and processes. Even then, the Nature retraction demonstrates just how hard it is to reach a conclusion in scientific fraud: despite the controversy and the paper being retracted, Nature describes the retraction as the result of "an investigation by the journal and post-publication review [which] have concluded that these concerns are credible, substantial and remain unresolved." Even a paper being retracted doesn't automatically mean that we can say for sure that this is fraud.

That same theoretical simplicity increases the damage done by bad actors: every year, hundreds of groups end up wasting both time and money pursuing replication attempts for badly-documented — and, sometimes, doctored — science. Some even provide their work in good-faith, only to find other co-authors co-opted the scientific process for one reason or another (just ask the hundreds of co-authors now left to scramble in discovering whether their own work was impacted this way by a single researcher, Francesca Gino).

There's been talks of a crisis of trust in the scientific community, but the precipitous rise in scientific fraud (retracted papers increased tenfold in the last decade) could actually be a result of better editorial control and improved peer-review processes. That's definitely the silver lining here, and one that's hardly the exclusive domain of science. 

Bad actors, bad studies, bad research and bad articles will always exist. You could even say it's in our nature.

Every electric product that you use -- even the power lines bringing the electricity into the building -- suffers from energy loss as the conductive circuits and transistors are inefficient. Not only is this a waste of resources, but also the lost energy generates heat that can cause its own problems (think about your CPU and all the cooling it needs). If only there were a way to stop this waste! 

Superconductors are materials that, at extremely cold temperatures, can conduct electricity at 100 percent efficiency. Should humanity be able to fabricate reliable room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductors, many of our technological efforts would become supercharged. Our computers would become faster and operate at much lower temperatures; our powerlines could be made to work at full efficiency, with not a single watt being lost in transit; and magnetic batteries could be made that would never lose the power stored within them to entropy.

These things would be possible (and up to a point, they already are possible) because superconductors are materials with the incredible property of allowing electricity to flow without any losses to electrical resistance. Not only that, but they can also be used to build permanent magnets, opening up the door to a number of tools and inventions (such as levitating maglev trains).

But what does all this mean? What are superconductors exactly? Here’s a brief view into what superconductors are; how they work; the story and research behind them; and what our superconducting future could look like.

The Science of Superconduction

Zero Electrical Resistance

The first superconductor was created by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who in 1911, created the first lossless “battery”. Onnes was studying the electrical properties of mercury (the same substance that expands and contracts within thermometers) when he found that mercury’s electrical resistance disappeared at temperatures below 4.2 Kelvin (4.2 degrees Celsius).

A number of other materials have been found to become superconductors – but all of them need to be cooled below a certain level. At a threshold which varies from material to material, electrical resistance abruptly drops. But to understand why this happens, we have to look at the quantum level and the Standard Model of Physics.

The world of elementary particles (the mass of particles scientists insist we’re made of) is divided in various groups. One of these elementary particles, the electron, is part of the fermionic family (this Fermi bit will be important later). And electrical current (at its most fundamental) is simply the ordered movement of electrons.

But electrons are also free particles – they fight against being ordered this way. In usual conductors, such as the copper wiring that delivers energy to our homes (and is in-built, alongside gold, in our CPUs, irrespective of where in our hierarchy they stand), the electrons can’t zip without losses. 

Like files of disorderly, starter-level skaters, some electrons bump against each other, others fall away into holes; it’s a mess. This electronic mess leads to energy leakage and losses; and temperature being simply a measure of how excited subatomic particles are (those skater kids we mentioned), this results in excess work lost as heat. Essentially, electronics heat up because they resist.

Within superconductors, however, there’s no resistance. At that threshold temperature, electrons (our unruly skaters) pair up into Cooper pairs. Bound together at this low temperature (which essentially forces all particles to move slower), electrons can now travel alongside a useful, pre-determined path without being distracted (into wasted energy). As long as they maintain their overall energy levels below the Fermi energy band, they can pass unimpeded, flawlessly delivering electrical energy between point A and point B. Known as BCS theory, owing to its authors Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer, the first description of this quantum explanation for superconductivity was published in 1957.

Unfortunately, there’s little that can be done with mercury: it’s not the ideal substance to make working superconductors with. Any substance we want for the purpose of the ideal, dreamt future of superconductors needs to play nicely with our existing techniques and materials. We won’t abandon silicon from our chips just because some strange, expensive mixture of mercury and another material can also be painfully worked into switches and transistors; the costs in doing that would be incalculable.

No; whatever material we come up with must “play ball” with our existing fabrication technology (and global infrastructure) before it revolutionizes the world. We must keep looking.

The Meissner Effect

In 1933, Walter Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld discovered that superconductors not only facilitated lossless energy conduction, but they also resisted outside magnetic fields. In fact, superconductors “expel” any nearby magnetic fields: the magnetic conduction lines are forced to diverge from the superconducting metal. This repulsion effect came to be known as the Meissner-Ochsenfeld effect (now more generally as the Meissner effect).

Moving back to Maglev trains for a moment, the Transrapid bit refers to the German-made architecture it’s built upon, and it has used both magnetic attraction and magnetic repulsion forces to allow the train to levitate. Since no surfaces are in contact, attrition is reduced to that of air, which allows Maglev trains to be safer and faster than their non-superconducting counterparts. The train’s usage of electrodynamic suspension (EDS) takes advantage of the Meissner Effect’s ability to negate external magnetic fields and to keep it in a position of perfect balance relative to the magnets installed along the “Magway” tramline.

Type I Superconductor

Type I superconductors (the only one we currently know about is tantalum silicide) simply cease to be superconductive as their environment stresses them enough. The material in the superconductive state bursts out of it through a first-order energy transition (reversely equivalent to the same energy transition that led it to become superconductive in the first place), and we’re back to our electrons being high-hormone, disorderly skater kids. This catastrophic loss of function absent the ideal working conditions is what differentiates Type I from Type II superconductors.

For superconductors to be superconductors, they have to present both the ability for their electrons to form Cooper pairs below a certain threshold temperature, as well as a Meissner-effect-induced ability to repulse magnetic fields. But superconduction being essentially a specific form of matter (that threshold state we referred to), it’s common that this state breaks down and ceases to superconduct. The way in which this breakdown happens can take any of two forms, which has led to a division of superconductors into Type I and Type II Superconductors.

Type II Superconductors

Unlike Type I superconductors, which lose their superconductive state of matter in a party-ending burst, Type II superconductors find a way to keep it going even under bouncer supervision. This happens because of how the materials that compose the superconductive material differ between each other.

Because the fabrication process isn’t perfect, particles of material that can transit into the superconducting state of matter are mixed in with other particles that can’t. So when the conditions are just right, parts of the compound will exhibit the superconductive behavior (where electrons travel along as Cooper pairs below the Fermi energy band), while other parts of the compound will exist where electrons are still free to mess things up along their ordered path.

These existential differences create what are essentially gaps in the superconductor compound’s ability to repel magnetic fields. Instead of the fields completely evading the compound, because there are bits of ordinary, non-superconductive material, certain magnetic strings can penetrate the bulk of the material, creating what are known as magnetic field vortices. These vortices lead to an ability called flux-pinning, where levitating materials are pinned in place by the penetration of external magnetic fields.

But what these vortices also do is they put a clock on how the material loses its superconductive state of matter. In the case of Type-II superconductors, the tensions between the superconductive and ordinary state lead to an increase in the vortices’ area; and as the flux-pinning vortices increase in radius and more of the material is penetrated by outside magnetic fields, more of it loses the ability to superconduct. While Type-I superconductors go out with a bang, Type-II superconductors cease working with a whimper.

What's the Outlook for Superconductors?

It’s a fact that our theoretical knowledge of superconduction is incomplete. While we have successfully used YBCO as a high-temperature, high-pressure superconductor, for instance, it’s also true that there’s currently no leading scientific explanation as to why it is that it becomes one.

It’s like watching any complex machine work as it starts, sputters, or spins: we don’t understand how it works, but it’s wondrous that it does. And we’ll be damned if we don’t make it useful.

It’s important to note that superconductors operate at the quantum level – a superconducting material exists when the conditions are there for certain quantum effects to naturally emerge. Condensed-matter physics (the scientific area that concerns itself with supercondcutors) takes into account both chemistry and quantum mechanics (which is simply chemistry at the level of the infinitely small) to study interactions between materials. It’s a complex, rapidly-changing field where breakthroughs are claimed almost weekly.

Zero electrical loss and permanent magnetic fields are entangled within superconductors, and that is big – trillion-dollar market big. Unfortunately, that also means that superconductor research is rife with time and funding sinkholes as well as false gods – retractions and fabricated data are a well-known, high-impact plague within academia, and are hardly limited to this field. 

In summer 2023, a Korean paper claiming to have discovered the formula for “The First Room Temperature Superconductor” took the scientific community through an Internet-flowing hype-wave. It’s understandable: we know how important such a material would be. But it’s been a curious case around LK-99, and time will tell if it deserves more than these sentences in the book about superconductors.

But perhaps that’s to be expected of any area of research which “promises” Nobel prizes for the most significant breakthroughs: humans are dreamers that sometimes exaggerate their achievements. And scientists are humans too, and we should avoid letting a few tar the image of every other.

While all the caveats above have to be taken into account, there has been decisive research onto superconduction: this isn’t vaporware. As we mentioned, the Shanghai Transrapid already functions on the basis of superconducting levitation. Particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) also employ superconductors, as do MRI machines and certain superconducting cables.

We may not fully understand how superconductors work yet, but perhaps that’s a moot point. Humanity has a habit of putting things to work to our advantage (and detriment) without fully comprehending them. Usefulness doesn’t require complete understanding; otherwise, progress would be grid-locked in amber.

Researchers have a good-enough idea of what to look for on the road to useful room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconduction. But being an explorer is difficult; mapping your way as you go is also considered a high-performance sport, after all.

Science (like us) isn't always sure of where the best possible future is, and computing is no exception. Whether in classic semiconductor systems or in the forward-looking reality of quantum computing, there are sometimes multiple paths forward (and here's our primer on quantum computing if you want a refresher). Transmon superconducting qubits (such as the ones used by IBM, Google, and Alice&Bob) have gained traction as one of the most promising qubit types. But new MIT research could open up a door towards another type of superconducting qubits that are more stable and could offer more complex computation circuits: fluxonium qubits. 

Qubits are the quantum computing equivalent to transistors - get increasing numbers of them together, and you get increased computing performance (in theory). But while transistors are deterministic and can only represent a binary system (think of the result being either side of a coin, mapped to either 0 or 1), qubits are probabilistic and can represent the different positions of the coin while it's spinning in the air. This allows you to explore a bigger space of possible solutions than what can easily be represented through binary languages (which is why quantum computing can offer much faster processing of certain problems).

One current limitation to quantum computing is the accuracy of the computed results - if you're looking for, say, new healthcare drug designs, it'd be an understatement to say you need the results to be correct, replicable, and demonstrable. But qubits are sensitive and finicky to external stressors such as temperature, magnetism, vibrations, fundamental particle collisions, and other elements, which can introduce errors into the computation or collapse entangled states entirely. The reality of qubits being much more prone to external interference than transistors is one of the roadblocks on the road to quantum advantage; so a solution lies in being able to improve the accuracy of the computed results.

It's also not just a matter of applying error-correcting code to low-accuracy results and magically turning them into the correct results we want. IBM's recent breakthrough in this area (applying to transmon qubits) showed the effects of an error-correction code that predicted the environmental interference within a qubit system. Being able to predict interference means you can account for its effects within the skewed results and can compensate for them accordingly - arriving at the desired ground truth.

But in order for it to be possible to apply error-correction codes, the system has to already have passed a "fidelity threshold" - a minimum operating-level accuracy that enables those error-correcting codes to be just enough for us to be able to extract predictably useful, accurate results from our quantum computer.

Some qubit architectures - such as fluxonium qubits, the qubit architecture the research is based on - possess higher base stability against external interference. This enables them to stay coherent for longer periods of time - a measure of how long the qubit system can be effectively used between shut-downs and total information loss. Researchers are interested in fluxonium qubits because they've already unlocked coherence times of more than a millisecond - around ten times longer than can be achieved with transmon superconducting qubits. 

The novel qubit architecture enables operations to be performed between fluxonium qubits with important accuracy levels. Within it, the research team enabled fluxonium-based two-qubit gates to run at 99.9% accuracy and single-qubit gates to run at a record 99.99% accuracy. The architecture and design were published under the title "High-Fidelity, Frequency-Flexible Two-Qubit Fluxonium Gates with a Transmon Coupler" in PHYSICAL REVIEW X.

You could think about fluxonium qubits as being an alternative qubit architecture with its own strengths and weaknesses; not as an evolution of the quantum computing that has come before. Transmon qubits are made of a single Josephson junction shunted by a large capacitor, while fluxonium qubits are made of a small Josephson junction in series with an array of larger junctions or a high kinetic inductance material. It's partly for this that fluxonium qubits are harder to scale: they require more sophisticated coupling schemes between qubits, sometimes even using transmon qubits for this purpose. The fluxonium architecture design described in the paper does just that in what's called a Fluxonium-Transmon-Fluxonium (FTF) architecture.

Transmon qubits such as the ones used by IBM and Google are relatively easier to manipulate into bigger qubits arrays (IBM's Osprey is already at 433 qubits) and have faster operation times, performing fast and simple gate operations mediated by microwave pulses. Fluxonium qubits do offer the possibility of performing slower yet more accurate gate operations through shaped pulses than a transmon-only approach would enable.

There's no promise of an easy road to quantum advantage through any qubit architecture; that's the reason why so many companies are pursuing their differing approaches. In this scenario, it may be useful to think about this Noisy-Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) era being the age where multiple quantum architectures flourish. From topological superconductors (as per Microsoft) through diamond vacancies, transmon superconduction (IBM, Google, others), ion traps, and a myriad of other approaches, this is the age where we will settle into certain patterns within quantum computing. All architectures may flourish, but it's perhaps most likely that only some will - which also justifies why states and corporations aren't pursuing a single qubit architecture as their main focus.

The numerous, apparently viable approaches to quantum computing we're witnessing put us right in the middle of the branching path before x86 gained dominance as the premier architecture for binary computing. It remains to be seen whether the quantum computing future will readily (and peacefully) agree on a particular technology, and how will a heterogeneous quantum future look like.

The scientific community may have largely settled on the matter of copper-doped lead apatite (LK-99) not being the room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor we need, but research groups are still finding reasons to look further. A new pre-print paper published by Arxiv reports on a quantum mechanics simulation exploring LK-99's possible superconductivity pathways. Like most theoretical papers on this side of the LK-99 announcement, the conclusion it draws is that it should be possible for LK-99 to be a room-temperature superconductor. Being a pre-print, the results have not yet been peer-reviewed.

Authored by Jun Li and Qi An with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University, the research paper reports on how current experimental LK-99 synthesis can theoretically lead to two final end-products. 

Due to the cooking process for LK-99 still being a relative mess (a result of the poor original documentation), LK-99 synthesis may result in two different arrangements of properties, mainly relating to how copper and oxygen atoms substitute the "base" lead atoms within lead apatite. In certain samples, high-symmetry arrangements of fundamental particles can leave open the space through which electrons can zip through unimpeded and without resistance (usually by bonding together in what are called Cooper pairs). However, due to a measure of uncertainty in how and where these symmetrical regions surface, they're usually interspersed within non-superconducting, low-symmetry zones. These low-symmetry zones create blockades to how freely electrons can move. Because they can't move without hitting other fundamental particles, electrons moving in low-symmetry zones tend to lose energy in the form of heat - leading to the usual semiconductivity we're already used to within materials such as silicon.

This particular behavior present in LK-99 synthesis shows how part of the issue in experimentally creating superconducting samples can be a result of extremely low yields of these superconductive symmetries. Too few of them, and the superconducting behavior doesn't emerge at all. This leads the study authors to posit that "the synthesis of LK-99 samples predominantly in the high-symmetry phase could pave the way to realizing room-temperature superconductors at ambient pressure."

The study's results - piled on with other theoretical studies that conclude in the same general direction - showcase just how difficult it sometimes is to cross the bridge between theory and practice. Theoretically, it seems LK-99 being a room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor is achievable. But practically, the current synthesis process (and superconductivity itself) could simply be still too poorly understood for us to be able to devise ways of improving yield - increasing the amount of useful, high-symmetry CU-doped lead apatite. 

Whether or not there's a practical way to get to superconductivity within LK-99, it seems certain that a lot of human and computing power is still needed before we can actually achieve it.

Research from a team at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland may point the way toward more sustainable and performant quantum computers. Tthe research team designed a vacuum-tube-like device that allows for cooling to happen in a purely electronic way - a possible road toward slashing cooling costs for dilution-refrigerated quantum computers by a factor of ten. In their experiments, the researchers found their design allowed for temperatures to drop by as much as 40%. 

These quantum computers mostly leverage superconducting transmon qubits to perform useful computational work, and have been the qubits of choice for quantum-forward companies such as IBM, Google, Amazon, and others (but not all). But in order for these superconducting qubits to work, they have to be cooled close to the absolute-zero temperature of space (~ 1 Kelvin). The necessity of mixing different helium isotopes to achieve these ideal operating temperatures adds additional layers of complexity.

One of the fundamental limits to any high-level computation is cooling capacity - the ability to draw computationally generated heat away from operating circuits. This particular limit is seen everywhere these days - from the difficulty in cooling 16-core Zen 5 CPUs, to the humongous hunks of fans and metal keeping our GPUs pumping frames, heat is one of the toughest engineering problems in the computing worlds of today, and tomorrow.

But quantum computers are even more sensitive than traditional electronics - they're more prone to outside interference, and are more fickle as to what types of interference can collapse their useful, working qubit states. So new techniques that allow for simpler, more efficient cooling are much in need. While some advances in new cooling techniques have been achieved (such as Frore's AirJet technique), they all mostly work the same way: by channeling a heat-bearing medium (such as water or air) away from the heat source.

But the Finnish scientists at VTT are taking a wholly different road: They developed a thermionic device that sheds heat in the form of electrons (channeling electrons requires energy, which is why thermionic devices taking advantage of the Peltier effect usually introduce yet another energy-consumption step). But crucially, this device allows cooling to be taken almost to its extreme: the researchers expect to be able to cool electronics down to a range between 1.5 K and 0.1 K - more than sufficient to serve as a fundamental cooling mechanism for "absolute-zero" computing. And this technique should be much smaller, less expensive, and less prone to errors from both a logistical and operational standpoint compared to fluid-based cooling.

“Our technology could help the industry scale down overall quantum computer system size,” said Mika Prunnila at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, in Espoo.

However, one issue with thermionic coolers is that electron activity isn't the only source of fundamental heat. Other particles, semi-particles, and quasiparticles also interact with one another; and it isn't infrequent that the cooling achieved through electron shedding is lost as a result of other particles (in this case, phonons) "coming back", interacting (colliding) with particles within the previously-cooled material, and heating it up again, in a process known as "backscattering". Crucially, the researchers' thermionic device is able to both direct electrons and block the returning phonons from interacting with (and heating up) the previously cooled surface.

The researchers' thermionic device works by channeling heat through different mediums at their junction points (where the materials interface with one another). In this case, heat is drawn from the superconductor medium to the semiconductor one, pushing heat away from the most sensitive bits (the ones we want near absolute zero), toward the less sensitive ones. In this way, the cooling effect can be maximized.

It's still early days for the technology, but if quantum computers and classical computers are to keep developing at a useful pace, fundamental breakthroughs in heat management are required. Perhaps the Finnish researchers' thermionic device is the answer, or perhaps not. At the very least, it cuts through some prvious unknowns toward smaller, more capable cooling solutions.

Earlier this month, the science community was abuzz with news of a possible breakthrough: a substance called LK-99 that's alleged to be a room-temperature superconductor. Discovered by Lee Sukbae and Kim Ji-Hoon from Korea university, the material would be a game changer for everything from power delivery to super computers, if it works as advertised. However, after a number of scientists tried and failed to reproduce Lee and Kim's' findings, the world seems to have moved on. 

But the field of superconductors is a fast-changing one. Newly-published, pre-print theoretical research generally continues to support LK-99 as having the properties required to become a superconductor; and now, internet sleuths have discovered a Korean-language update on the original LK-99 patent. This document presents further details (and also new questions) regarding the synthesis process, even as the original Korean authors reaffirm the significance (and veracity) of their discovery.

Unfortunately, what we're still left with is an incomplete picture of LK-99 - one that will seemingly require much more effort in understanding than some would lead us to believe. But the paper does have what's required: a graph plotting LK-99's resistivity. Crucially, the graph says it does drop to zero.

Let's start with the updated patent itself, which describes two techniques to synthesize the relevant, superconducting bits in LK-99. One of those techniques is one we know already: solid state synthesis is the process we followed across the internet, and the one being used by most scientists attempting to replicate the original paper's really bad recipe. It involves reacting the different compounds within LK-99 in order to obtain a crystal-like final compound of copper-doped lead apatite (mixing lanarkite and copper phosphide, themselves compounds made from reacting lead oxide with lead sulfide and reacting copper with phosphorous, respectively).

There were already a number of problems with the actual recipe, but the updated patent throws yet another wrench in the equation by suddenly including Si (the silicon we know and love) within the mixture. It's also unclear how silicon got there and how relevant it is for the superconduction itself (if it's relevant for that at all, which currently doesn't seem like it is). There does seem to be a pattern in which the original Korean team led by Lee Sukbae isn't able to provide good documentation. In fairness, it's also possible that crucial details are simply lost within the bowels of machine translation, or to the speed at which they've seemingly put everything together.

At the same time, the authors admit that yes, the resulting lead-apatite compound is typically an insulator (which prevents electrical current from coursing through it, the exact opposite of what we're trying to achieve here). But they also reiterate that copper doping - which leads to lead atoms being replaced with copper atoms within LK-99 - is key to unlock the claimed superconductivity capability (oxygen atoms are also important, it seems). We already covered this possibility in more detail here, as well as the issue with yield (the proportion of  superconducting material produced through the synthesis process). According to the updated patent, Lee's team saw samples with a ratio of 48.9% superconductive lead apatite; 40% of non-superconductive lead compounds; and copper compounds (11.1%).

This coexistence between superconductive and non-superconductive compounds may be the reason why certain LK-99 internet videos (if legitimate LK-99) showcased a phenomenon dubbed flux pinning, where external magnetic fields are able to penetrate the superconductor compound through the parts of it that aren't superconductive (everything that isn't lead-apatite), pinning it in place.

But it seems that solid state synthesis wasn't how Lee's team discovered the (alleged) emergent superconductivity of LK-99. This was done through a technique known as vapor deposition; through it, the same compounds were reacted, but instead of the objective being to end up with an LK-99 crystal, the technique instead allows for the reaction's vapors to collect against a glass structure, creating a thin film of the compound. According to Sukbae and his team, this film is forged in the 100 degrees Celsius - 400 degrees Celsius temperature range (with a black film of lead sulfide (PbS) in the lower temp area, a white film of lanarkite (Pb2SO5) in the higher temp area, and a gray film of lead appatite in the intermediate area.

It's from this gray lead-apatite, micron-thick film that the authors insist room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductivity emerges. The authors also pre-emptively refer state that impurities of iron (Fe) and other elements also emerge from the synthesis process, and that these impurities are well-known sources of ferromagnetism and diamagnetism - some of the features other studies have already encountered and replicated. 

But  it may have been premature to consider those results as proof that LK-99 is a dud. According to the authors, these magnetic features make it more difficult to see the actual Meissner Effect in action, with less cautious onlookers assuming that LK-99's levitation capabilities ended at those types of magnetism.

The precise method to identify and measure the Meissner Effect's telltale repulsion of external magnetic fields lies in applying a very low magnetic field with what's called a Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID). If done while heating and cooling LK-99, the SQUID will then be able to detect the Meissner Effect as it emerges within LK-99's superconducting state: within two of its three critical temperature phase transitions. These phase transitions themselves correspond to changes in the material's structure that then allow superconductivity (the ordered and resistivity-less movement of electrons) to occur.

Which brings us to the latest paper from Vayssilov et al at Sofia University, which also suggests that LK-99 could have the required properties to become a superconductor (do note that once again, there's no mention of room-temperature or ambient-pressure). The general idea presented in the paper is that there are two ways that could happen: by removing certain oxygen atoms from their places, potential highways for superconductivity appear, with space that was previously occupied by atomic nuclei now being open for electron pairs (the so-called Cooper pairs) to skirt around. Another proposal from the paper is that this same effect can be achieved through the Cu doping we've talked about.

Following this LK-99 saga, there's also been a few articles posted to Arxiv that don't necessarily deal with LK-99 itself, but with certain systematic errors and incomplete knowledge on magnetism surrounding superconductor research and the theory applied to reach (supposedly correct) results. 

The authors say that they have run LK-99 through a scanning electron microscope in all of its phases as they occur in both production outputs (the film from vapor deposition and the compound from solid state synthesis). According to them, it's easier to measure and replicate LK-99's superconductivity results in the film-like material. 

With the authors' description of how to detect the Meissner effect now published, additional researchers may apply this new knowledge to their replication attempts. Whether or not that will result in any positive replications - and whether that will come sooner rather than later - remains to be seen.

A new article published in the science journal Nature aims to be the last word for theories regarding LK-99 as a superconductor. Penned by science reporter Dan Garisto, the article is a post-mortem of sorts on the scientific research surrounding LK-99 and the replication efforts that are attempting to separate hype from fact. But Science does as Science does, and different people looking at the same information routinely reach differing (but not necessarily opposite) conclusions.

The article runs through accumulated evidence presented for and against LK-99 being (or not being) the room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor to usher humanity into an unrecognizable (and extremely energy-efficient) future.  The debate keeps circling around the same issues: the fact that condensed-matter researchers are dealing with quantum effects (of which there's still racing research and troves of knowledge to be processed into scientific reality) only throws an additional wrench at the already tool-laden, insufficiently-clear recipe posted in the original Korean paper. 

The rabbit hole scientists have been following around LK-99 pertains to copper sulfide (Cu2S) impurities. The specificity of the temperature at which the Korean authors detected a tenfold drop in resistivity (from 0.02 ohm-centimeters to 0.002 ohm-cm) seems have been the definitive thread. Prashant Jain, a chemist at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, said that that was the detail that most caught his eye. The thing is that Jain had seen that specific temperature before: it's the temperature at which copper sulfide (one of the impurities that results from the LK-99 synthesis process) undergoes a phase transition. below the temperature needed for that phase transition to occur, in a way that's almost identical to the same transition towards superconductivity the original authors attributed to LK-99.

Jianlin Luo, a physicist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and his team performed two experiments that aimed to bring clarity to the prevalence of copper sulfide. The second sample out of those experiments saw its resistivity dive near 112 degrees C (385 Kelvin), which was a match to the Korean team's observations. 

But the documentation penned by the original paper's authors (led by Lee Suk-bae, the lead author) is only part of the problem: there's currently no way that scientists currently know of to properly guide the synthesis process in order to increase the number of lead atoms that end up being replaced by copper atoms (note, not copper sulfide) within LK-99 itself (in an extremely simplified manner, that's the reason the Korean authors attributed to the emergent room-temperature and ambient-pressure superconductivity in their sample). As unclear and disappointing that might be, that's one of the factors that has to be taken into account when looking into LK-99. It's the scientific equivalent to the salt we're used to sprinkle on leaks and unconfirmed reports in our hardware world.

As to the theoretical front, which used simulations to understand whether or not LK-99's structure was conducive to superconductive behavior, new research from a US-European group too performed precision X-ray imaging of their LK-99 samples. Their observations led them to conclude that despite those initial papers and their promising (if not definitive) outlook, LK-99's flat bands (through which electrons can zip through losslessly) weren't conducive to superconductivity after all.

More recently, a team with the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany reported they had synthesized pure, single crystals of LK-99. Using a technique termed "floating zone crystal growth", the researchers managed to grow LK-99 crystals that were absent of the copper sulfide impurities. The resulting pure LK-99 (with the formula Pb8.8Cu1.2P6O25) showcased behavior in-line with other studies and replication attempts: it behaved like an insulator, not a superconductor. These pure, purple samples too showcased ferromagnetism (expectedly from Fe impurities which weren't able to be fully eliminated) as well as diamagnetism. That led them to conclude that when separated from impurities, LK-99 isn't a superconductor; as they wrote in the paper, the data led them to conclude that LK-99 isn't a superconductor, period.

While the title of the DOI-infused Nature piece unapologetically reads "LK-99 isn’t a superconductor", the first sentence in the article's body presents leaves room for the possibility. "Researchers seem to have solved the puzzle of LK-99." (Emphasis ours.) Nature, apparently, isn't beyond punchy headlines, but in science, there's always more studying to be done. The full article is worth a read, if only to go over all of the evidence involved in the saga.

And perhaps that's for the better. Owing to the gaps in the original paper's data and the difficulty in replicating LK-99, there are still holdouts in the scientific community that don't think the LK-99 saga is over yet.

The prospects of LK-99, the controversial substance that its discoverers claim is a room temperature superconductor, living up its hype are dimming. In recent days, many scientists have synthesized the substance and published studies showing that it does not have superconductive properties, at least in the form that they tested it. However, two papers published to pre-print scientific repository Arxiv posit that LK-99 could, maybe, prove to be a superconductor if only some doping were applied.

Doping LK-99 is exactly what it sounds like: you take something that wasn't in the original recipe (in this case, for lead-apatite) and you put it inside the system to improve its performance. In this case, the new results, penned by Liang Si et al and Korotin et al, find reason to believe that doping LK-99 by inserting extraneous atoms (which weren't supposed to exist in the original system) might result in the claimed superconductivity. We say "might" because they haven't actually created and doped the substance.

Although initial analysis from other teams found that LK-99 already had the 'Fermi' flat bands necessary for electrons to cross unimpeded and frictionlessly (as they'd need for the zero resistance claim to be true), others have theorized that it needs some help getting there: there's still work to do to even understand LK-99. Achieving the exactly-precise configuration of particles and quantum particles (quanta) is hard. 

There are two kinds of LK-99 researchers right now: the experimentalists (who have attempted to synthesize LK-99 and physically verify its properties) and the software simulation wizards (they're all still quantum scientists, just to be clear). Those who have actually attempted to synthesize LK-99 and then analyze the sample have found no real proof of superconductivity. Some have shown the substance magnetically levitating and researchers at Southeast University in Nanjing claim that they measured zero resistance at -163 degrees celsius.

The computer models are more bullish, positing that there are scenarios where this could become a superconductor. None of them prove so conclusively - they're just simulations, after all. And these simulations too have to make assumptions based on the available LK-99 data.

Confirming this gap between theory and practice, there are also new results on the experimental front. The work done by Andrew McCalip on LK-99 synthesis resulted in a small LK-99  fragment, which was analyzed with the help of the USC Materials Consortium. The conclusion is what we'd expect, as we've covered here at Tom's Hardware: the biggest issue stems with the experimental synthetization process.

Andrew McCalip explains how even by using 99.99%-purity precursors (precursos being the initial chemical agents made to react with one another to generate the final compound), there were still enough impurities in them that their resulting LK-99 included micrograms of simple iron (Fe). Iron being a ferromagnetic material, its presence (even in the decimals) was enough to induce magnetic responses in the LK-99 samples they cooked. When you're dealing with the quantum realm, even a wary, unwelcome subatomic particle can throw a wrench at the partying particles.

There's a chance that this is what the end of the LK-99 road looks like; a field of failed replications finding solace in the presence of other elements that might be the cause of LK-99's behavior. But there's also a chance that this isn't the end of the line, and that increased scrutiny and improvements to the synthetization process (perhaps paired with some additional data from Korea) will approximate theory and practice.

Published results looking at LK-99 will only increase in the foreseeable future, as different teams across the world finish their replication and simulation attempts. It remains to be seen how history remembers LK-99; perhaps it's just the latest overhyped disappointment. Or maybe doping will change the game. However it ends, it was a fun run where material science inspired the public's imagination. 

Is LK-99, the new substance that has taken the scientific community by storm, the world's first room-temperature superconductor, a regular superconductor or a non-discovery? As more time passes since the release of Sukbae Lee et al.'s original paper, more researchers are trying to synthesize their LK-99 samples and test them for diamagnetism and superconductivity. New studies from groups in Mainland China, Taiwan and India claim that there's no breakthrough and that the material may not even be diamagnetic. 

In summarizing the findings of these three research groups, the University of Maryland's Condensed Matter Theory Center tweeted, "With a great deal of sadness, we now believe that the game is over. LK99 is NOT a superconductor, not even at room temperatures (or at very low temperatures)."

However, these dispositive studies are far from the final word, particularly since each group made its own LK-99-like substance, which may not have been identical to what Lee et al. created. We also still have studies from other sources who claim they have replicated some of Lee et al.'s claims. 

Kapil Kumar et al., a group of scientists from India's CSIR National Physical Laboratory, released a paper explaining that an LK-99 sample they created in the lab had no evidence of superconductivity at any temperature and was "highly resistive" as well. This result is exactly the opposite of what you'd want to see. The sample was apparently diamagnetic at 280K (6.85 degrees Celsius), but that doesn't necessarily correlate with LK-99 being a superconductor.

A separate group from National Taiwan University (NTU) ran LK-99 experiments in a live video broadcast on YouTube but failed to show superconductivity. Wang Limin, a professor of physics at NTU, told Liberty Times that on the fifth evening of testing, the material was found to have diamagnetism, but it was not a superconductor. However, he also said that the research continues. 

Diamagnetism occurs when both magnetic poles repel a substance. In the last week or so, we've seen several videos which show a tiny black substance, claimed to be LK-99, floating above or below a magnetic field. Superconductors exhibit diamagnetism, so these videos imply that the magnetic levitation proves LK-99 to be a superconductor. However, as the Condensed Matter Theory Center pointed out in a tweet, "NO, diamagnetism is NOT interesting, many materials (e.g. Pb, Cu, P going into LK99) are diamagnetic. It is a run-of-the-mill property."

Meanwhile, Kaizhen Guo et al., researchers at Peking University's International Center for Quantum Materials, published a paper claiming that LK-99 actually has some soft ferromagnetic components which cause it to "half levitate" (levitate while still partially touching supporting materials). However, the group stated that they didn't detect the Meissner Effect or zero resistance, both required for superconductivity.

These three studies certainly suggest that LK-99 could be more useful for powering a hype machine than superconducting electricity. But it's important to note that each of these groups synthesized its own substance, meaning the material they tested may not have been identical to the sample that Sukbae Lee et al. used in their experiments.

One solution: get LK-99 samples directly from the group in Korea that's making the superconductivity claims and test those. Apparently, that is happening. According to the Flat Hat, a student newspaper from the College of William and Mary, Korean researchers are sending some LK-99 samples directly to physics professors at Virginia University. So stay tuned.

There's been no slowing down in the LK-99 alleged superconductor breakthrough saga. Yet instead of it becoming clearer whether or not LK-99 is "the First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor" as claimed by the original Korean Authors, we're left with more questions than answers. The original poster of one of the Billibilli videos circulating on the Internet and seemingly proving LK-99's levitation ability has come forward, and admitted his clip was a hoax. 

The video in question is allegedly from the University of Science and Technology in Beijing and purports to show a small black substance floating in the air as it follows a magnet. According to the video's poster, he did it for "attention grabbing purposes" - it was a way to coast the hype around LK-99. Well, he did write "LK-99" and "levitating", which sounds about right for the purpose. You can see the original video below (if you expand the... tweet? X?).

This original (and now debunked) video doesn't look very good, no; the angle is a weird one to choose (but it's not like everyone has to also be a cinematographer); and there's an overall sketchiness to it. But even if it looked great, it could still be a fake as could any of the videos we've reported on in our coverage. 

We should note, however, that there are at least two other LK-99 levitation videos circulating, which have not been withdrawn or disproven. As we reported previously, these videos come from Huazong and Wuhan universities.

Whenever a claim as momentous and potentially civilization-changing such as "we've found the world's first room-temperature superconductor" is made, noise is bound to follow. And sometimes the noise gets to you, which is why it's important to note that whether LK-99 is or isn't legit is still very much up in the air.

Granted, the scientific community usually doesn't have to deal with social media-spread videos when it's evaluating whether or not a given paper has merit. But even focusing on the hard science (which we want to be clear, replicable, and truthful) and moving on to the boundaries of peer-review scientific process, it becomes difficult to deal with the noise. 

After all, papers have been published in Nature claiming "near-ambient" superconductivity that have been proven as hoax and described as "a very disturbing picture." And let's not forget that the Korean author's paper is still pending the outcome of a proper peer-review process. 

Superconductors are attractive because they are impactful, and everyone wants their own black swan. However, materials science is a messy affair that plays in the same realm as quantum physics. 

The original paper also lacks crucial information that you'd think would be there. Neither the cooking time (how long at what temperatures the mixtures have to stay within a vacuum oven for LK-99 to be synthesized and whether there's thermal variation at any moment) nor the quench rate (the same, but when it needs to cool down) are, however, well-documented.

The video poster ultimately claimed that the experience of being a part of the noise had changed him, and that he'd be more cautious with his actions and words in the future. 

We should all be so lucky.

With all the rage on superconductors zipping through the news (looking at you, LK-99), it's sometimes easy to let other stories fly under the radar. But science happens everywhere, all the time: now, a research team with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a superconducting device that they say will bring improved energy and thermal efficiency to electronics. Their work was published in an online issue of Physical Review Letters.

Like LK-99 (which is still going through a messy replication and peer-review process), the MIT-designed diode (a kind of switching device) is still in its design infancy. Yet even so, Jagadeesh Moodera (lead author) et al. say this diode is already twice as efficient as previous diode architectures when it comes to carrying current (and preventing losses), with ample design room left to improve its characteristics.

It could even impact quantum computing. And in fact, this development came as a serendipitous discovery as the team looked into Majorana fermions, one of the building blocks of topological qubits, a yet-to-be-vindicated qubit design that's been pursued by none other than Microsoft. The team soon realized their Majorana-inspired work on superconducting diodes could be easily transferred into the realm of classical (i.e., non-quantum) circuits.

Diodes are a crucial part of any chip, and are an integral part of a circuit's design. While transistors are frequently used to amplify input signals from low resistance circuits to high resistance circuits within the chip, diodes can be used as either voltage stabilizers or as one-way valves (in that they only allow current to flow in one direction). It seems that either of those applications would benefit from this new superconducting design.

With chip design being forcefully constrained by the amount of heat generated by electrical losses (a bottleneck that's seen increasingly more complex transistor designs and new cooling technologies that deal with these issues in a limited manner), the benefits of lossless diodes in improving computing and thermal efficiency shouldn't be underestimated.

All the hallmarks of a superconductor were required to make the super-efficient diodes. The MIT research team showed that tiny differences between the edges of the diode devices could be optimized (by adding serrated edges, or applying other deformations). That's why the design is still open for optimization: the amount of possible design variations is enormous, and there's only so much time to find what the best asymmetrical configuration is. 

The design quirk shows that even microscopic differences in materials can result in disproportionate results. These diodes also have superconducting hallmarks such as the Meissner effect and the ability to lock into pre-existing magnetic fields (known as flux pinning).

Speaking with SciTechDaily, Philip Moll (Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Germany and not involved in the research) said that the MIT team's paper showcases how superconducting diodes are now an "entirely solved problem from an engineering perspective". He also added that the record efficiencies showcased by the design were hit "without even trying", with structures being "far from optimized yet". That sounds like perfectly smart (although still hard) science.

Crucially, the team says its superconducting diode is robust, and is able to operate over a wide temperature range while potentially opening the door to new technologies and designs. Adding relevancy to the discovery, the engineers say these diodes' design is simple and compatible enough that it's easily scalable - millions of them can be produced across a single silicon wafer.

So let's get them out here already?

A parodical open letter addressing the scientific community was published before the weekend. Taking its tone from the quite alarmist Pause Giant AI Experiments paper, which was published in March and included signatories such as Elon Musk, the new open letter asks humanity to Pause Random Superconductor Experiments.

The parody letter gets off to a galloping start with its subheading calling on “all labs and kitchens to immediately pause for at least 6 months the making of conductors with lower resistance than copper.” Then the letter quickly establishes its case for caution, pausing superconductor experiments that could cause astonishing challenges. It asserts that the worlds of physics and technology could be changed forever, and this is backed by “top scientific institutions and Russian anime cat girls.”

Our last quote from the opening paragraph, as you must go and enjoy this ‘open letter’ fully for yourself, delivers a barb to famous names like Mr Musk. It echoes the Pause Giant AI Experiments letter by fretting that the level of planning and management is falling short. Thus scientists may be unleashing “ever more potent superconducting materials that no one – not even the crypto bros turned AI bros turned superconductor bros themselves – can fully comprehend, predict, or reliably control and hype.” Should we say Ooof?

We have left you a lot more of the Pause Random Superconductor Experiments letter to read and enjoy, including a warning about “unelected scientists.” However, we were particularly delighted by some incidental flourishes from the creators of this parody.

For example, the new open letter is hosted at FutureofLiff.org, while its inspiration is to be found on the Future of Life Institute’s campaign site for steering transformative technology (FutureofLife.org). The Future of Liff clearly takes its inspiration from The Meaning of Liff (1983), a witty dictionary of toponymy and etymology written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd.

We also feel compelled to point out that the “number of signatories” to the parody is 293K, which hasn’t changed since we saw this humorous post yesterday. This is certainly due to 293K being equivalent to room temperature in Kelvin.

For some readers, the cherry on the parody cake will be the delicious selection of signatories. Of the ten individuals, who are unquestionably leaders in their fields of expertise, we would most like to know more about: Sir Percival Ferroflux, Magnet Magnate; Countess Valentina Quenchfield, Inheritor Emerald and Copper Mines Company; and Baron Reginald Cryogenius, Executive Director of Superconducting Infrastructure and Cryoplumbing Development.

For more serious semiconductor coverage, please check out our recent articles on the Messy LK-99 Superconductor Creation Process and our updated piece on how recent independent demonstrations have shown Superconductors Levitating At Room Temperature.

If you're interested in making your own batch of the LK-99 superconducting material that's grabbed headlines around the world, you might be in for a shock at the complexity and nebulousness of the procedure. And as we'll detail below, you might also find difficulty sourcing some of the materials needed. 

If one person has stood among the eddies of the LK-99 superconductor drama as it happens in the US, that person is Andrew McCalip. The R&D engineer with California-based Varda Space Industries, McCalip has been at the forefront of public, independent replication efforts around the serendipitous superconductor, open-sourcing his work through Twitter and live-streaming the cooking process over Twitch - a relatively rare generosity. From his process, we can glean more information about the elusive LK-99 compound, its synthethization process, how difficult that process is in the face of restrictions around some of the required materials, and the somewhat "spotty" manufacturing process described in the original Korean paper. You can see his efforts in the two albums of images below.

The main issue in replication stems from the cloudy process described in the original Korean paper — the documentation for making the material is incredibly vague. This fact is made evident by the buzz surrounding replication attempts, but it's also led to a veritable graveyard of failed samples in McCalip's possession.

Materials scientists will tell you that for baking processes, essential data include the temperature (at around 725 º C in a vacuum), how long it takes to bake, and what temperatures (the paper gives a baking time-band of 5-24 hours, which as you can imagine, introduces a lot of error), and the rate of quenching (that is, how fast should the samples' temperature be forced to drop).

The rate of quenching isn't even mentioned in the original Korean paper, leading McCalip (and other replicators, we imagine) to perform a sort of Russian roulette that's led to several differing, alien-looking samples of the LK-99 compound — and a number of broken ampules containing proto-attempts at synthesizing the compound. McCalip estimates that 2/3 of baked vials are rejects due to the lack of detailed information on the manufacturing process, a "yield-wall" that other researchers too will have to contend with.

As we've dived into before, LK-99 is a compound that results from reacting lead sulfate with a copper-phosphorous compound. The ingredients are usually easy to commission — red phosphorus and copper to synthesize copper phosphide, and lead sulfate and lead oxide, which together form a mineral called lanarkite.

As it's currently understood, the addition of copper into the lanarkite baking process forces some of the lead atoms to be replaced by copper atoms in an unpredictable and currently incontrollable ratio. It seems that it's these copper atoms displacing lead that leads to LK-99's superconductive properties (due to the emergence of what are known as Fermi bands), manifested in the hallmark emergent magnetism (courtesy of the Meissner effect) and zero resistance to electrical conductivity (most of the drama surrounding LK-99 today surrounds its claimed room-temperature superconductivity not having yet been replicated, however).

On perhaps a less optimistic note, however, it seems the frenzy around LK-99 - and its almost "kitchen-counter" manufacturing requirements have dried up an unsuspecting worldwide supply chain.

As McCalip put it, it was relatively tough to secure one of the particular ingredients, red phosphorous, as it's a controlled substance that can also be used to synthesize morphine derivatives. But the combined brain power of Twitter devised that he could secure a shipment of copper phosphide (fewer synthetization steps) through a local California lab. According to him, he also managed to secure a supply from Poland before the supply dried up, a perhaps meaningful bit for the worldwide efforts to replicate and better understand LK-99.

The relatively cheap and abundant base minerals mean it's unlikely they'll be long-term bottlenecks toward LK-99 manufacturing at scale (if that's the actual road we're on). But the worldwide supply chain isn't ready for sudden "black swan"-imposed demand jumps, which means that the current street price for Copper Phosphate has climbed precipitously towards the $20,000-per-kilogram ratio. There's a scenario where the mineral supply bottleneck could hinder research efforts; unfortunately, the world of minerals and chemistry is vulnerable to supply hoarders that aim to turn a quick profit, although it's a much more well-regulated arena than, say, GPU and game console purchases. Fortunately.

In the end, McCalip and Varda's replication attempts resulted in a small, unsuspecting flake of LK-99 showcasing the same Meissner-effect-induced magnetic levitation — the first reported "floaty rock" in US soil that's being sent to the University of South California (USC) for additional testing. You can see that in action by expanding the below tweet. 

All in all, that's not a bad result for a "couple days" work: McCalip managed to be the first in US soil to actually demonstrate what seems to be a Meissner-effect levitation on the LK-99 flake he managed to synthesize. But considering the current outlook on the supply of certain materials, it seems that other DIY replicators will have a hard time attempting to "own their own LK-99." Perhaps it's best to wait until the manufacturing process has been better detailed across replication papers. The flux around LK-99 is still a messy and confusing one, but that mist is bound to be lifted - one superconducting, levitating way, or the other

Tom's Hardware tried to contact Andrew McCalip for commentary but we haven't received a response yet. We'll update if we learn more. 

News about the potential room-temperature superconductor dubbed LK-99 is a story that has gripped a much wider audience than the science genre usually reaches. The incredibly broad appeal of this news, which could have far-reaching impacts on our everyday lives, has now permeated the less-than-serious cryptocurrency community. An LK-99 meme coin was established a few days ago, and it is doing a roaring trade. In its first 24 hours of trading, the LK-99 coin surpassed $3 million in trading volume.

Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that sometimes become popular due to the enthusiastic reception for the thing or idea they represent. Famous meme coins include Dogecoin, and we have also seen tokens based on Pepe the Frog, Floki, and Harry Potter catch the zeitgeist. Obviously, LK-99 looked like a good opportunity for the foundation of a new meme coin, and Coin Telegraph notes that several LK-99 coins have been listed on the decentralized exchange Uniswap.

Probably the leading contender for any meme coin durability is the ERC-20 LK-99 token, which, per our headline, was of enough interest to generate $3 million in trading volume in its first 24 hours.

If we look at this LK-99 meme coin today, the news is a little sadder. Was this meme coin another pump-and-dump escapade? It seems to look like it, or at least its rise and fall, appear to trace the classic bubble chart. This isn’t surprising as meme coin developers are often upfront about these tokens being of no intrinsic value.

With the ebbs and flows of LK-99 keeping us on our toes, it wouldn’t be surprising if there were some more spikes and falls in ERC-20 LK-99 token valuations, but it is a characteristically risky digital asset to put any serious money into.

We have been busy keeping up with LK-99 news and developments as they happen. In our latest installment of the LK-99 saga, yesterday, we noted that another institution concluded that LK-99 indeed showed evidence of superconductivity (magnetism due to the Meissner effect) at room temperature. However, demonstrating or observing zero electrical resistance of the material at room temperature seems to be a stickier issue. 

Stay tuned for more LK-99 insights, and the Wikipedia Live Tracker for LK-99 is also useful for those wanting to keep abreast of the latest developments.

The worldwide scientific community is still working around the clock to verify claims of a new superconductor that might yet revolutionize human civilization. Now, we have two pretty convincing videos showing the substance floating in the air. Scientists with the Huazhong University of Science and Technology claim to have replicated LK-99's levitation abilities at room temperature, which they showcased in a video uploaded to Bilibili. And Zhang Chiang, from Wuhan University also in China, has uploaded a new video as of Saturday.

This is an encouraging sign: one of superconductivity's hallmarks, magnetism due to the Meissner effect, seems to be a replicable feature of the copper-lead-apatite compound. If only it were "that easy" to confirm (and understand) the material's zero electric resistance capability and how it manifests.

The first video below comes from the scientists at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and, though it's hard to see, there's a small black substance that's allegedly LK-99.

The second video, uploaded to Billibilli by Zhang Chiang, an assistant engineer and doctoral student at the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials of Wuhan University of Science and Technology, showcases what’s claimed to be an LK-99 flake showcasing one crucial aspect of a superconductor’s levitation: flux pinning.

 Huazhong University Video

Wuhan University Video

Flux Pinning

The Wuhan University video showcases an LK-99 flake levitating above a powerful magnet. But levitation itself isn’t a sure-sign of a superconductor: most metallic elements showcase diamagnetism by themselves. What differentiates a superconductor’s levitation is that it exhibits flux pinning - an emergent levitation capability that occurs as the pre-existing magnetic field (from the lower magnet) interacts with the superconductor.

The way to differentiate between diamagnetic and flux-pin levitation is that in “normal” levitation, the floating object can be disturbed by outside forces, including gravity - this leads to a floating rock that just can’t seem to stand still, as it glides, balances and wobbles above an ever-changing tug-of-war between it, the magnetic field, and external forces (such as a gust of air, for instance). 

Flux pinning, however, pins the magnetic field lines within the superconductor itself. Type-II superconductors (such as LK-99 appears to be) feature internal magnetic vortices; flux pinning happens when the bottom magnet’s own magnetic field (which is actually quantized, that is, discretely composed of impossibly thin action lines, and not a formless cloud) interacts with these magnetic vortices and pinning centers are created. 

As the word implies, these centers “pin” the interaction between forces, locking the levitating superconductor in place. In the Wuhan University video, this is seen as the LK-99 flake stays pretty much locked in position above the magnet, despite being poked with the external, probing force of a simple pen 

Where LK-99 Tests Stand

The clear-cut update is this: despite the fact the researchers could replicate LK-99's levitation at room temperature, there's still no successful replication of the announced room-temperature LK-99 superconductivity. For that to happen, both the Meissner-effect magnetic field and zero electric resistance are required from the same sample. And while scientists have previously shown that LK-99 does have zero resistivity at -163C, they haven't yet proven it has those properties at room temperature.

So what we're left with (still) is several failed or partially failed replications - and a whole world of additional knowledge on LK-99. The Wikipedia live tracker is one of the best places for anyone looking for up-to-date information on the (public) replication processes currently underway.

The replication difficulties and the nebulous history around superconductors (which have seen several similar room-temperature superconductor claims announced, published, and retracted) combine into a visible, waving, giant red flag. So remember to remove your rose-colored glasses. LK-99 is a fickle thing, and the ground it's standing on is filled with question-shaped potholes.

As our understanding of LK-99 improves, the fuzzy road ahead become slightly clearer. Unfortunately, it seems that the material's characteristics themselves may both be its boon and its blight. That's not to mention the fact that the original scientists did a shoddy job of documenting how they created the material, leaving scientists to patch together samples with a somewhat incomplete cookbook.

As we've explored before, LK-99 is a compound made from reacting lead sulfate with a copper-phosphorous compound. The process through which this compound becomes LK-99 requires that the materials be baked at high temperatures for around 24 hours in a vacuum. This is slightly easier to achieve than it sounds, as several Twitter/X posts and videos of people "owning their own LK-99" will show you (there's also the eternal memory of a Russian soil scientist and her kitchen counter as the first claimed independent synthetization of LK-99). 

And adding great to good, the materials aren't even expensive to procure — the materials are all relatively cheap and abundant. But the biggest problem with LK-99 doesn't seem to involve its synthetization; the problem is the lack of control over the chemistry and quantum processes that occur during the fabrication process itself.

Crystals, it turns out, are fickle things. And the way LK-99 seemingly becomes a superconductor has to do with how many lead particles are replaced by copper. As it stands, it seems that the more copper that replaces lead in the final mixture, the purer the resulting compound is (which translates into it showcasing both the emergent levitation courtesy of the Meissner and zero resistance to electrical conductivity). 

But that is both the solution and the problem; for now, there's no way for researchers to know what the synthetization process will actually do at an atomic level. So the scenario we're arriving at is that sometimes, there may simply not be enough superconducting elements in a given LK-99 batch for it to showcase any of the superconductive properties we're all hoping it does. It's actually in the formula: the "x" values in Pb10-xCux(PO4)6O, as it's represented in chemistry parlance, mean that it's uncertain just how many of the 10 base lead atoms are replaced with copper atoms. But it seems that the higher the number, the better.

To complicate things even further, however, it's not just a case of having as many copper atoms replace lead as possible; the places where these substitutions occur in the crystal also matter. It seems that some locations are better for unlocking LK-99's superconducting capabilities than others, and for now, once again, we have no way to "pick and choose" what happens during the synthetization process.

Adding insult to injury, the same LK-99 batch can have different ratios of copper atoms replacing lead across its volume. Some will be high, which is good for levitation and bringing a twinkle of excitement to our eyes; some will be low, resulting in a mostly inert compound that would be better used as a doorstop.

And that's saying nothing about how even the most random and seemingly insignificant variances in any of the synthetization steps can introduce unknown variables into replication attempts themselves — especially when researchers are following already badly-documented processes.

Cue the number of failed replication attempts, which, if all this pans out, is likely to keep increasing until it comes to a point where we can design a new synthetization process that improves yield. With all these moving parts, however, it's no wonder we're still walking across a dark room.

 It’s still likely that the LK-99 saga will end in disappointment, despite all the lessons and science data being collected and worked on as a result of this. Perhaps it’ll truly happen as some have said (and we ourselves did), in that this discovery will follow the path of cold-fusion. Even if it does, all lessons learned here will inform our future - and the upside is simply too great for us not to try. 

Update (Aug 5th): We've added coverage of the second video from Wuhan University.

Is LK-99 is a black swan? A worldwide race to validate whether the material is a room temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor is still ongoing. Beyond the initial coverage rush, well over a dozen research teams are working at breakneck speed to validate the original South Korean claims around the copper-lead-apatite compound. 

According to a real-time Wikipedia live-tracker, a total of 16 separate teams are working on the replication efforts as we speak — 16 that we know of, anyway. Considering the claims that LK-99 has already been synthesized over a Russian kitchen sink, you can bet that a number of efforts all across the world are underway to crack LK-99. From government agencies to corporations and even individuals, the race is on.

The results are hit and miss: The scientific community is having difficulty verifying both halves of the superconducting equation. Yesterday, Tom's Hardware reported that a Chinese team with the Physics Department of Southeast University in Nanjing, China, reported to have measured zero electrical resistance. But research teams worldwide are repeatedly failing to verify both halves of the superconductor equation — both zero electrical resistance and magnetic levitation due to the Meissner effect. Is it a breakthrough, or just bad science? Here's everything you need to know: the good, bad, and ugly of LK-99 and the current research efforts around it.

The LK-99 Superconductor so Far

There's no consensus at present as to whether LK-99 is the be-all, end-all of superconductors. Replication efforts are underway, and institutions are gathering around the issue. Currently, there are ten different teams confirmed to be working on the matter with actual physical experiments, and six teams conducting theoretical studies, per a live tracker on Wikipedia:

The Korean Society of Superconductivity and Cryogenics (KSSC) has instituted a verification committee with the goal of scientifically assessing the original experiment. According to a machine learning translation of the proceedings (shared by Alex Kaplan on Twitter), the initial assessment by KSSC is that the available research (both the rogue first paper and the "official" second one), as well as public data on LK-99, doesn't support the claim that LK-99 can be called a room temperature superconductor. 

These first conclusions spurred the Quantum Energy Research Institute to respond by saying it would provide the committee with a sample, with which it could verify that LK-99 is indeed a room-temperature superconductor. Considering the volume of suspected fraud in the history of superconductor announcements, it pays to be careful.

In the meantime, the Chinese researchers that claimed yesterday to have replicated superconductivity have published their paper to Arxiv, the pre-print repository whose servers must be getting slightly more hammered than usual. There, they write in more detail how they used solid-state synthesis to produce a polycrystalline sample of LK-99 (Pb10−xCux[PO4)6O). They also verified high-temperature superconductivity that was slightly worse than the original sample at above 100 Kelvin (-173º C) compared with the 110 Kelvin (-163 ºC) verified in the original Korean experiment.

The words they use in describing their conclusion are telling: LK-99 "is a possible candidate for searching high-temperature superconductors." If that's it, then it seems that LK-99, as they verified it (and remember that the synthetization process was badly documented and has shown extreme variability), actually isn't a room-temperature superconductor.

Another Chinese research team with the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science led by Dr. Junwen Lai et al published extremely similar results on August 1st. It seems room temperature confirmation has so far eluded any and all attempts at replication.

That LK-99 presents superconduction at relatively handleable (if very low) temperatures seems to be a fact, but questions still abound.

What's Next

Experimentation and sciency stuff will keep happening until someone has either validated the (then Nobel-winning) Korean team's original results, or partially validated them ... or until crushing defeat as the claims are disproven. You can rest assured that everyone in the superconductor realm of research is paying close attention to LK-99 right now, and even if it ends up being a failure, that, too, is part of the scientific process.

But in general, there seem to be three distinct ways the LK-99 process can go: One, we've found a true ambient-temperature, zero-resistance superconductor. If that is true, it'll take years of work to better understand this material before it actually revolutionizes human life. Considering the relative cheapness and abundance of the two key ingredients — lanarkite (Pb₂SO₅) and copper phosphide (Cu₃P) — it's likely we'll get some usage out of it as a superconductor, even if synthetization yields don't improve much. And the synthetization process (at least, at this likely crude stage) is relatively simple.

It wouldn't take that many flakes of LK-99 to revolutionize the sensor industry, opening up all kinds of doors in the field of medicine, microelectronics, cybernetics, and Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) designs. In this scenario, there's little doubt that with good enough yields and a better understanding of the quantum chemistry happening here, LK-99 could indeed revolutionize human life.

Another way this could go is that LK-99 is a superconductor, but not the superconductor. Let's assume it's confirmed to be a high-ish temperature superconductor (due to superconductance being reported around the 110 Kelvin mark). That's still an incredible win. 110 Kelvin [-163 ºC] does bring LK-99's superconductor utility down to liquid Nitrogen-required levels (LN2) instead of the much more expensive and difficult-to-handle liquid Helium (He). 

That alone brings room-scale superconductance into the equation, which is already enough to bring superconductors to MRI machines and other medium-scale applications. Humanity would still find a number of applications for it, as we've done for even YBCO, the first material discovered to be a superconductor. YBCO's main issue is that it becomes superconductive only at about 93K (- 180 ºC). It's also a very difficult material to refine (its yields are extremely low), but we've already tamed it into a subset of its possible applications. And expanded applications, or iterative improvement, is what it's all about.

Another way this could go might become a parallel to what happened with cold fusion in 1989. Then, a botched experiment yielded erroneous results, catapulting the scientific community toward a wild, frantic goose chase in an attempt to replicate the results. There too, the discovery was swiftly followed by several tentative or partial announcements of replication, which tapered off and started being retracted as time passed. In the end, cold fusion and the fuss about it originated from a failed moment in science, and the scientific community is now pretty agreed upon that. But notice the possible similarities...

The scientific community is still scrambling to confirm the recent revolutionary claim by Korean scientists that they have created a room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor. But with enough brainpower looking into the subject of the LK-99 material, it's bound to be a matter of time before the superconductivity claims are fully confirmed or denied. 

Once again, researchers in China seem to be at the forefront: today, scientists with the Physics Department of Southeast University, a top university in Nanjing, China, have reported measuring zero electrical resistance, a key requirement for superconductivity, in a sample of LK-99 they produced from scratch. However, that comes with the caveat that they could only achieve the properties at -163C, not at the room temperature touted by the original paper. As with other efforts from other teams, two of which claim to have confirmed certain other aspects of the claimed superconducting breakthrough, the new results from the Southeast University team are preliminary — the team is still studying different methods of fabricating the material, with plans to provide more results in the future. Other research teams are also still working to replicate the initial claims.

After having successfully synthesized LK-99, which they say was purer than the samples the original Korean time achieved, the Chinese research team helmed by Doctor Sun Yue looked into the material's conductive properties, finding some "very interesting electronic properties of this material." As a reminder, LK-99 is a compound of lanarkite [Pb₂SO₅] and copper phosphide [Cu₃P] baked within a 4-day, multi-step, small batch, solid-state synthesis process that was nevertheless also achieved over a Russian kitchen counter.

In this case, the "very interesting electronic properties" refer to the material's ability to conduct electricity without any resistance — leading to incredible efficiency savings that could get PC enthusiasts something like that 30 GHz processor Intel promised but never delivered.

The above video shows the researcher explaining the findings. Using a four-point probe method, the scientists measured their synthesized LK-99 at 0 resistance at an ambient temperature of 110K (-163 º C) and at normal air pressure. They also verified that LK-99 transitioned in and out of its zero resistance state depending on whether it was subject to a strong electric field, another hallmark of superconductivity. Here's a summation of the team's findings, taken from the Wikipedia live-tracker page:

"Claimed to have synthesized LK-99 and to have measured superconductivity up to a temperature of 110 kelvin. Claimed to have observed an abrupt drop in resistance between ~300K and 220K, aligning with the Korean LKK team's results. Claimed to have confirmed structural consistency with x-ray diffraction." 

The confirmed absence of electrical resistance now comes together with yesterday's news that confirmed at least one-half of the superconducting equation was solved: LK-99 showcased the Meissner effect (originally Meissner-Ochsenfeld), which results in the levitation of materials as they interact with the Meissner-effect-induced magnetic field. And now, it seems the other half of the equation, resistance-less electrical conduction, was verified in LK-99.

But questions remain even here: it seems that LK-99 only shows superconductivity at 110 kelvin (-163C), which disputes the "room-temperature" bit originally claimed (although all tech enthusiasts that have dabbled in liquid nitrogen cooling know that 110 kelvin is handleable, if not practical). It's also unclear why LK-99 would show both diamagnetism (responsible for levitation) and superconductivity, but within different temperature bands — expectations would paint it more as a "buy one, get two" promotion.

Yet one plus one generally being equal to two, we seem to have independent confirmation of several facets of a superconducting compound being successfully synthesized. 

But while this is incredibly promising news, there are still caveats. For one: it's strange that two teams verified different halves of the superconducting requirements, but no team has successfully verified both (as of the time of writing). You would think that it would make more sense for one side to take more time to crack than the other; otherwise, why didn't the initial Meissner-effect observation also show the hallmarks of zero electrical resistance? What is stopping these teams of extremely talented individuals from achieving what others before them did in full? 

In the video, Professor Yue himself says that while promising, the team's results aren't proof that LK-99 is the superconductor breakthrough we've been waiting for. For that to happen, you'd have to wait for a credible institution to confirm both the Meissner effect and the zero electrical resistance halves of the equation — at the same time. And even then, it won't be enough: their announcement (cue all other scientific prizes) will have to be followed up by other institutions up to a point where there's enough overlap in the results that says: "This is more than fabricated data or a mere fluke". 

And that's not saying anything of all the sweet spots this material needs to hit to be the hero we want it to be. It has to be abundant enough and easy enough to access that it's relatively cheap to mine; then it has to be relatively cheap to process and synthesize at a mass scale; and then it still has to be turned into actually useable bits of electronics that are compatible enough with our current fabrication methods. Talk about high standards; that's years of work right there.

For now, LK-99 seems to have some limitations. It's currently hard to synthesize at high purities (because it only happens in very specific areas of the compound), meaning yield is likely to be poor. And in fact, perhaps this purity problem (acknowledged in the original paper) is the root of most of these issues: scientists have had a difficult time creating enough quantities of the material that display any of the superconducting or diamagnetic features. There could be unknown factors at play at a chemistry level that explain the low yield, but if that's true, then we can't really trust the replicability of the results just yet.

Another limitation is that the material could be one-dimensional - meaning that it only presents superconductivity on a section of it, which could be why the levitation in the original video wasn't even. That still means a load of possible applications while unlocking new ones — it's never a pure loss.

For now, the jury is still out on the original Korean teams' claims of a room-temperature superconductor, and the Southeast University researchers will continue to study the new material and fabrication methods as they search to find the correct mixture to replicate the room-temperature superconductor. For now, some claims have been preliminarily confirmed, while others remain out of reach. Several other teams are also racing to validate the paper, so we're sure to learn more over the coming days. 

Humanity may be in the throes of another breakthrough that's every bit as impactful as the invention of the transistor and the advent (and eventual vindication) of quantum computing. LK-99, as it's been named, is a new compound that researchers believe will enable the fabrication of room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductors. Initially published by a Korean team last Friday, frantic work is underway throughout the research world to validate the paper's claims. For now, two separate sources have already provided preliminary confirmations that this might actually be the real thing — Chinese researchers have even posted video proof. Strap in, this is a maglev-powered, superconducting ride.

Superconductors, a wild category of compounds that can conduct electricity without any losses, have been a metaphorical goose chase for years now, with multiple research teams claiming (and then retracting) papers and announcements of its achievement. The reason is simple: Few things come close to the potential of an actual superconductor discovery in terms of what it can do for humanity's current and future technology. Imagine if your 16-core mainstream CPU (which likely requires a competent watercooling solution to avoid incinerating itself) operated without power losses — no current leakage, no electricity waste in the form of heat. Superconductors mean almost perfectly efficient computing.

Scale that to the world's supercomputers, and you begin to get an idea of the performance impact when trillions of transistors based on superconducting materials work in tandem across GPU and CPU tiles to accelerate things like Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads. Or scale it in the realm of consumer electronics, quantum computing (where superconductors are important for Josephson junctions), and magnets in general (maglev trains, tokamak fusion reactors, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), electric motors and generators...)

If you can dream it and it features an electrical current or magnetism, it's likely a superconducting material would improve most aspects of it while leaving a surplus of previously-wasted energy within humanity's batteries. Environmental sustainability, then, is also a factor.

There might be more to LK-99 than skeptics expected, as two research teams claim to have informally confirmed certain aspects of the superconductivity claims — albeit in preliminary testing.  Researcher Sinéad Griffin from the U.S.'s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab pored over the original paper, taking advantage of the supercomputing capabilities within the Department of Energy to simulate the LK-99 material. This complex-yet-simple concoction results from combining the minerals lanarkite (Pb₂SO₅) and copper phosphide (Cu₃P), which are then baked within a 4-day, multi-step, small batch, solid-state synthesis process.

As a result of the simulations, the researcher published an analysis letter in pre-print form to Arxiv, where she confirmed that the resulting material should manifest the superconduction pathways for electrons to travel through unimpeded and without any resistance. Interestingly, she noticed that these superconducting pathways only form in very specific areas of the compound, namely the highest-energy areas of the resulting crystal lattice.

Because physics dictates that systems tend to remain stable at their lowest-possible energy states, this means that the amount of superconducting material produced with each "shake-and-bake" manufacturing attempt will result in relatively low quantities of the material. The hope, then, is that further refinements to the fabrication process will yield higher quantities of the material that can then be harvested and put toward building the superconductors themselves.

But in what's perhaps the most definite sign of a verification, Chinese researchers with the Huazhong University of Science and Technology have claimed to have successfully replicated the superconductor's manufacturing process, posting a video on Bilibili as proof.

The above video showcases the Meissner effect as being definite proof of the material's superconducting capabilities. The Meissner effect refers to the expulsion of a magnetic field due to the superconducting process. It is the reason why the video showcases levitating materials — they are interacting with LK-99's Meissner-induced magnetic field.

The entire story surrounding this discovery is a scientific rollercoaster ride, with rogue scientists, updated papers, plus cloudy definitions and process descriptions within the paper that make replication efforts more difficult, and even a Russian soil scientist (and anime catgirl) deconstructing the original Korean paper to unveil the trademark levitation of the Meissner effect over her own kitchen counter.

We've seen movies with much less complex plots than this already. It's eerily appropriate that such a monumental discovery would be rife with drama. And we're still waiting for a definite announcement that yes, humanity has finally produced room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductors. After that, there are plenty more physics barriers to crash through, as always.

Edit 8/2/2023 1:40 pm ET: Embedded BiliBili video from the Chinese researchers. 

“If the 20th century was the century of semiconductors, the 21st can become the century of the superconductor.” 

That is how professor Mazhar Ali, head of a Delft University of Technology research team, puts their scientific breakthrough. Published in Nature, the discovery concerns superconductors, which are a class of materials that offers loss-free electrical conductivity. The research demonstrates that superconductors too can be made to only carry electrical current in a single direction — something that was previously thought impossible. The discovery may ultimately allow for electronics to become not only more efficient but also more performant by factors of hundreds, perhaps even unlocking the terahertz era, no less. 

Superconductors are materials that carry current without any resistance. This means (all things being equal) that signals don't lose their integrity and there is no energy loss in the form of heat - irrespective of the actual physical distance separating the signal's origin and destination points - even if you were to measure it in Astronomical Units (AUs). 

The problem with superconducting materials is that due to their characteristics, it becomes impossible to control the flow of electrons. Since there's no resistance throughout the length of the material, there's also no easy way to add it, and the current flows forwards as well as backward. The flow of electrons can usually be controlled through deployment of electromagnetic fields. But these are extremely hard to design, control and deploy at the nanometer scale of current manufacturing processes, which would throw a wrench into costs and scalability.

The scientists solved this by replacing classical components of Josephson Junctions, which are used to break material symmetry. To do so, they deployed a novel quantum material - which are essentially classical materials that have been manipulated (or shaved) towards their minimal possible size (usually only as thick as the molecules themselves). The scientists call their new design “Quantum Material Josephson Junctions” and have based it on the quantum material Nb3Br8. 

Like graphene, Nb3Br8 is a 2D material that the research team theorized could be host to a net electric dipole - a particularly useful structure that allows for the superconducting symmetry to be broken. Due to this material, the researchers could now control the flow of current on their superconducting material, ordering the electron chaos towards having a "forward" path, where electrons can happily skim through the superconductor without any resistance, and a "backward" direction, the one scientists didn't want their free-moving electrons to go towards.

Imagine having a piece of velvet in your hands. If you trace a finger in the direction of the fibers, you're met with little to no perceivable resistance. But if you go against the fibers, the soft feel is largely gone - there's a difference between directions.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) estimates that the superconducting efficiency advantage alone would allow for a 10% reduction in global western energy consumption compared to traditional semiconductors. At the same time, chipmakers would jump at the opportunity to reduce heat and wasted electrical power on their designs, as they always do when economically feasible.

But another element to this research is the type of performance increase superconductors can unlock compared to their traditional semiconductor counterparts (which, you guessed it, only deliver a part of the original current towards the destination due to the material's natural electrical resistance). According to Mahzar Ali, this new scientific breakthrough could pave the way for a transformative evolution in the chip manufacturing industry. Technology that has only been achieved with semiconductors can now potentially be made with superconductors - delivering up to 300 to 400 times the operating frequencies of classical materials. Ultimately, he said, the possibility is real for all sorts of societal and technological applications.

The researchers don't expect consumers, or even the most diehard PC enthusiasts, to have access to superconducting-based computing any time soon. While this may change with time and further materials research, that doesn't mean the breakthrough's impact is lessened. The researchers expect data centers and supercomputers to be the first to adopt superconductor designs. But with the increasing push towards cloud services, like Microsoft's Windows 365 Cloud OS and cloud gaming, there's a real impact on both environmental sustainability and the end-user experience. 

As in all research — and especially the revolutionary kind — there is still a lot of work to be done before this translates into actual products. For now, the scientists are focused on reducing the operational temperature of their design. The aim is to achieve so-called “High Tc Superconductors” which would allow the Josephson diodes to operate at temperatures of 77 Kelvin (-192 ºC), high enough for cooling to be taken care of by liquid nitrogen, already used to enable the world's most impressive overclocking records on some of the Best CPUs and Best GPUs.

Another element to tackle is, naturally, production scaling. While the researchers' work proves that superconductors can actually be leveraged in nanodevices, there's a world of difference between manufacturing for academic purposes and the high-stakes yield game of foundries. If the researchers can devise a way for production to scale up towards millions of Josephson diodes in a single nanoscale chip, all bets are off for the terahertz race. That's enough to make even my old Netburst Pentium 4 huddle against a corner.

A new discovery focused on superconductors that use exotic particles may have just laid down a path toward greater quantum computing stability and scaling, potentially pushing up the timetable for accessible quantum computers. 

Researchers at the University of Maryland’s (UMD) Quantum Materials Center (QMC) have been exploring a new superconducting material that appears to be topological in nature: uranium ditelluride (shortened to UTe2). This poses huge potential benefits for quantum computers, so the team fabricated crystals of this material and went to work on studying its properties.

Superconductors are materials that carry current without any resistance. This means that signals don't lose their integrity and that there is no energy loss in the form of heat. Topological superconductors marry the fields of quantum physics and topology, a mathematical field which explores how the same material can be manipulated into different shapes simply by pushing and pulling at it, playing only with its innate physical characteristics. 

Think of clay modelling. You can use the same ball of clay to create either a plate or a vase simply by pushing and pulling at it. This means that the plate and vase are topologically grouped — the material is the same, but it can be manifested or manipulated in such a way that different shapes come out of it.

This is important, because topological superconductors present scientists with two differing yet complementary behaviors. First, electrons in topological superconductors dance around each other, rather than simply flowing independently of one another — it's a sort of naturally occurring connection between them. When this happens, they create a sort of vortex in the center of their dance, which makes breaking them apart exceedingly more difficult than if they were free-floating without this dance synchronization. Second, scientists have identified an exotic particle that seems to arise on the surface of these topological supercondutors, Majorana modes, which behave as if they were only half of an electron. These Majorana modes have been shown to deposit as a layer on top of the topological superconductor, but are not conductors themselves. 

Instead, the thin Majorana mode film seems to act as a force field of sorts, to bring some sci-fi parlance into the equation. They are resistant to disturbances from outside forces, appear irrespective of the superconductor's irregularities, and insulate the superconductor, which usually transmits its superconduting properties to whatever it's in contact with. Steven Anlage, a professor of physics at UMD and a member of QMC, describes this behavior as resulting in "this topologically protected surface state that is kind of like a wrapper around the superconductor that you can’t get rid of.”

This means that uranium ditelluride and its emergent physics properties seem to be enablers for stronger, more stable quantum connections, since encoding information on its emergent particles is naturally more resistant than current approaches. And if there's one thing we know about quantum states, it's that they strongly dislike any disturbance. 

Both these phenomena are key, scientists think, toward achieving more stable and easily scalable quantum processors. The researchers have so far failed to find any other explanation other than the discovery of a topological supercondutor that could explain these behaviors, and the next step in the process is to attempt to create thin depositions of uranium ditelluride that are easier and more reliable to analyze than the crystals they've been working with. 

Should they find success in this particular research branch, they'll have to come up with new equipment that could handle the natural radioactivity in the material (it is uranium, after all). Then they need to design and manufacture actual devices that put these principles to work. It'll take several years, but the quantum research community's interest and response to these discoveries point to them being fundamentally important for the future of quantum computing.

They discovered that a type of high-temperature superconductor may feature a previously unknown phase of matter that could either work in favor of superconductivity or against it.

Superconductors are usually used in scientific experiments, for example by particle accelerators such as the Tevatron at Fermilab or the LHC at CERN. To reach superconductivity, superconductors are often cooled to absolute zero, which typically requires liquid helium as a coolant. Even high-temperature superconductors need to be cooled halfway to zero. Prior to entering the superconducting phase,  electrons are in an energy gap that arises when electrons pair off and drop to the lower energy level, which is the foundation for superconductivity. As soon as the temperature rises, the electrons split up, regain their previous energy level again and a material cannot superconduct anymore as a result.

Stanford's findings suggest that there is another phase in their copper-based superconductor: Many electrons do not pair off, but form an "elusive order" that had not been observed in the past. The researchers said that this state is not understood yet, but further research will highlight whether this phase works in favor of superconductivity or against it. If it is in favor, it can be promoted. If it is against it, it could be suppressed. In the next step, the researchers want to learn to understand the "nature" of this new phase.

The detailed research is published in the March 25 issue of Science.