this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Scientists from South Korea discover superconductor that functions at room temperature, ambient pressure (arxiv.org)
submitted 1 year ago by L4s to c/technology
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Scientists from South Korea discover superconductor that functions at room temperature, ambient pressure::For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor ($T_c \ge 400$ K, 127$^\circ$C) working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure. The superconductivity of LK-99 is proved with the Critical temperature ($T_c$), Zero-resistivity, Critical current ($I_c$), Critical magnetic field ($H_c$), and the Meissner effect. The superconductivity of LK-99 originates from minute structural distortion by a slight volume shrinkage (0.48 %), not by external factors such as temperature and pressure. The shrinkage is caused by Cu$^{2+}$ substitution of Pb$^{2+}$(2) ions in the insulating network of Pb(2)-phosphate and it generates the stress. It concurrently transfers to Pb(1) of the cylindrical column resulting in distortion of the cylindrical column interface, which creates superconducting quantum wells (SQWs) in the interface. The heat capacity results indicated that the new model is suitable for explaining the superconductivity of LK-99. The unique structure of LK-99 that allows the minute distorted structure to be maintained in the interfaces is the most important factor that LK-99 maintains and exhibits superconductivity at room temperatures and ambient pressure.

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[–] macarthur_park 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is likely bunk.

There was a nice comment when this was posted on one of the science communities digging into the history and affiliations of the authors of this preprint: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/249222/-/comment/1110464

Just by looking at the authors, this is not real:

Of the three, the first author (and corresponding author) and second author claim Q-centre as affiliation. If you check the webpage, it is not a research lab but just a commercial company selling this as a product. The third author claims KU-KIST as affiliation, but the only one I can find in google scholar has no background on superconductivity at all, and actually I can't even find them as a current faculty member of KU-KIST.

If you look at the other paper they have in arxiv about the same, list of authors from the same Q-Centre, plus a last author from Hanyang university, but researchgate shows him as last publishing in 2006, so I assume long time retired by now. Not in the field of superconductors either.

I am looking for other work from any of the authors, and I can find none. Science is an incremental process, with some breakthroughs, sure, but incremental. Cancer won't be cured in a day, and room temperature ambient pressure superconductors won't just happen out of nowhere. Even room temperature superconductors at very high pressures aren't really a thing, as the recent retractions of Ranga Dias' papers shows.

As an aside, here is an interesting talk about the work that went into showing that the data was manipulated in those high-pressure room-temperature superconductor papers - as much as papers with manipulated data are a terrible thing for science, the fact that people will go to these lengths to prove them wrong is very reassuring. A paper that is wrong only misleads for a while, actual science pushes through and buries it eventually.

There have been A LOT of room temperature superconductor claims, thus far all have been irreproducible, either due to measurement error or likely fraud. I wouldn’t take this one seriously, especially since non of the coauthors have any previous publications in this field. That’s a big red flag.

[–] spittingimage -4 points 1 year ago

Thanks for looking out for us.