Researchers at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory say they have found the first, long-sought proof that a decades-old scientific model of material behavior can be used to simulate and understand high-temperature superconductivity – an important step toward producing and controlling this puzzling phenomenon at will.
Researchers at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory say they have found the first, long-sought proof that a decades-old scientific model of material behavior can be used to simulate and understand high-temperature superconductivity – an important step toward producing and controlling this puzzling phenomenon at will.
The simulations they ran, published in Science today, suggest that researchers might be able to toggle superconductivity on and off in copper-based materials called cuprates by tweaking their chemistry so electrons hop from atom to atom in a particular pattern – as if hopping to the atom diagonally across the street rather than to the one next door.
“The big thing you want to know is how to make superconductors operate at higher temperatures and how to make superconductivity more robust,” said study co-author Thomas Devereaux, director of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at SLAC. “It’s about finding the knobs you can turn to tip the balance in your favor.”
Read more at DOE / SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Image: Computer simulations at SLAC and Stanford suggest a way to turn superconductivity on and off in copper-based materials called cuprates: Tweak the chemistry of the materials so electrons hop from atom to atom in a particular pattern – as if hopping to the atom diagonally across the street rather than to the one next door. This grid of simulated atoms illustrates the idea. Copper atoms are in orange, oxygen atoms are in red and electrons are in blue. (Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
