The new material based on lutetium, nitrogen and hydrogen is able to maintain superconductivity at room temperature. An article about it published in Nature.
The phenomenon of superconductivity has been known since the middle of the 195th century, thanks to this effect, direct current can flow through a conductor with zero resistance and without ohmic heating. This makes it possible to transmit very high power, including for creating strong superconducting magnets. However, for a long time, superconductivity could be achieved only at the temperature of liquid helium, several decades ago materials appeared in which this effect is observed at the "high" temperature of liquid nitrogen, −XNUMX degrees. In recent years, physicists have been trying to create a material that would not require cooling at all and would work as a superconductor at room temperature.
Nathan Dasenbrock-Gammon from the University of Rochester and his colleagues created such a material from atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen and lutetium - a metal of the lanthanide group. Adding nitrogen to a superconductor based on lutetium hydride (H 3 Lu), according to the authors, should increase the number of charge carriers in this material and potentially increase the temperature at which it remains stable.
In the course of the work, scientists prepared lutetium hydride and compressed it in a nitrogen atmosphere to pressures of 32 atmospheres using a cell with a diamond anvil — a special press for creating extremely high pressure. As a result, a material with an as yet unknown crystal structure was formed, which conducts current with zero losses at a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius and a pressure of 10 atmospheres. This means that equipment based on this superconductor does not require coolers to operate.
The following experiments showed that this material often changes its structure, and also loses or acquires superconducting properties when the pressure is increased or decreased. In addition, scientists still do not understand how many atoms of hydrogen, lutetium and nitrogen contain crystals of this superconductor and how they are distributed in space. In the future, they hope to find out with the help of neutron beams.
