When people imagine “new materials,” they typically think of chemistry. But UConn physicist Ilya Sochnikov has another suggestion: mechanics.
When people imagine “new materials,” they typically think of chemistry. But UConn physicist Ilya Sochnikov has another suggestion: mechanics.
Sochnikov works with superconductors. Superconductors are materials that let electricity flow without losing energy. In a normal conductor—say, a power line—electric current is gradually whittled down by friction and loss. We lose as much as 90% of the electricity we generate this way. But an electric current could flow through a superconducting circuit forever, unchanging. Practical superconductors would make power grids and many devices, including new computers, much more energy efficient.
Chemists and metallurgists have experimented with different combinations of elements for years, trying to get superconductors that work at temperatures close to room temperature (most superconductors only work when they’re super cold.) The idea is to come up with the perfect combination of elements that will have exactly the right density of electrons, at the right energies. When that happens, electrons pair up and move through the material in a synchronized way, even at temperatures above 77 degrees Kelvin, which is the temperature of liquid nitrogen. That’s considered a high-temperature superconductor, because liquid nitrogen is cheap to produce and can be used as a refrigerant. But finding the right chemistry to make new and better high-temperature superconductors has been elusive.
Sochnikov and his students are thinking about it differently. What if mechanical changes such as squeezing or stretching could make a material a superconductor? Changing the chemistry is ultimately about changing the arrangement of atoms and electrons in a material. Mechanical stresses can do the same thing, in a different way.
Continue reading at University of Connecticut.
Image via University of Connecticut.
