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** WHAT IS THE SECRET OF SO CALLED “ZERO RESISTANCE

/RESISTIVITY”OR EXPALIN THE HYPOTHETICAL CONCEPTS ON ROOM


TEMPERATURE SUPER CONDUCTIVITY..?

Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who was studying the
resistance of solid mercury at cryogenic temperatures using the recently-discovered liquid
helium as a refrigerant. At the temperature of 4.2 K, he observed that the resistance abruptly
disappeared. In subsequent decades, superconductivity was found in several other materials. In
1913, lead was found to super conduct at 7 K, and in 1941 niobium nitride was found to
superconduct at 16 K.

The next important step in understanding superconductivity occurred in 1933, when Meissner
and Ochsenfeld discovered that superconductors expelled applied magnetic fields, a phenomenon
which has come to be known as the Meissner effect. In 1935, F. and H. London showed that the
Meissner effect was a consequence of the minimization of the electromagnetic free energy
carried by superconducting current.

The complete microscopic theory of superconductivity was finally proposed in 1957 by Bardeen,
Cooper, and Schrieffer. Independently, the superconductivity phenomenon was explained by
Nikolay Bogolyubov. This BCS theory explained the superconducting current as a superfluid of
Cooper pairs, pairs of electrons interacting through the exchange of phonons. For this work, the
authors were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972.

Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials at extremely low


temperatures, characterized by exactly zero electrical resistance and the exclusion of the interior
magnetic field (the Meissner effect).

The electrical resistivity of a metallic conductor decreases gradually as the temperature is


lowered. However, in ordinary conductors such as copper and silver, impurities and other defects
impose a lower limit. Even near absolute zero a real sample of copper shows a non-zero
resistance. The resistance of a superconductor, on the other hand, drops abruptly to zero when the
material is cooled below its "critical temperature". An electrical current flowing in a loop of
superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source. Like ferromagnetism and
atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. It cannot be
understood simply as the idealization of "perfect conductivity" in classical physics.

Superconductivity occurs in a wide variety of materials, including simple elements like tin and
aluminium, various metallic alloys and some heavily-doped semiconductors. Superconductivity
does not occur in noble metals like gold and silver, nor in most ferromagnetic metals.

A room-temperature superconductor is a material yet to be discovered which would be


capable of exhibiting superconducting properties at temperatures above 0° C (273.15 K). This is
of course not strictly speaking "room temperature" (20–25° C), however it can be reached very
cheaply.
Since the discovery of high-temperature superconductors,( High-temperature superconductors
(abbreviated high Tc) are a family of superconducting materials containing copper-oxide planes
as a common structural feature. For this reason, the term is often used interchangeably with
cuprate superconductors.

This feature allows some materials to support superconductivity at temperatures above the
boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K or -196°C). Indeed, they offer the highest transition
temperatures of all superconductors. The ability to use relatively inexpensive and easily handled
liquid nitrogen as a coolant has increased the range of practical applications of
superconductivity.) Several materials have been claimed as being room-temperature
superconductors. In every case, independent investigation has quickly proven these claims false.
As a result, most condensed matter physicists now welcome with extreme skepticism any further
claims of this nature.

As of 2006, the highest-temperature superconductor (at ambient pressure) is mercury thallium


barium calcium copper oxide (Hg12Tl3Ba30Ca30Cu45O125), at 138 K, though there are claims that
this can be raised to 164 K by applying high pressure to the superconductor.

More information on this subject can be found here: http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/cond-


mat/papers/0606/0606187.pdf .

A potential candidate for room temperature superconductivity is metallic hydrogen.

Theory has been put forward by N.W. Ashcroft that metallic hydrogen may be a superconductor
as high as room temperature (290K), far higher than any other known candidate material. This
stems from its extremely high speed of sound and the expected strong coupling between the
conduction electrons and the lattice vibrations.[6]

1. GIVE THE POSSIBLE ARGUMENTS ON THERMAL AND ELECTRICAL


RELAXATION TIMES (USE WIEDEMANN –FRANZ LAW)..?

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