If this material does just what they say it does, what would it revolutionise?
Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?
Or as the article talks about, is this just a pointer at other possibilities that would be the real game changers?
Not only products would be impacted but experiments too, particularly particle experiments. All colliders need some sort of ridiculous magnetic field which uses a close loop helium chiller.
Long term wise, anything that uses electromagnetic fields would be impacted, like motors and generators. You in theory can get stupidly efficient motors (99%+) motors with super conductors.
- A global power net. No solar power during the night? Just produce it on the other side of the planet.
- A superconducting computer. Less resistance when pushing bits around = 500x less power consumption.
- A Superconducting magnetic battery. Store power indefinitely with high efficiency.
ETA: wrong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_computing#Fund...
https://www.ti.com/lit/an/scaa035b/scaa035b.pdf
This document explains it well. (The resistance of the interconnect is not even mentioned as a significant component of power consumption.)
Obviously this isn't much benefit since the vast majority of applications can't be liquid nitrogen cooled (and computing has followed "what consumers will buy" on progress).
That changes substantially if superconductors will keep working when put in my pocket.
Assuming of course it is possible to shrink the superconductor circuits down to the same size of the semiconductor counterpart.
Whether or not we can manufacture/shrink the superconductor circuits enough to be competitive with semiconductors is another question, but my naive interpretation is that if you can make the superconductor circuits 100x larger than a silicon circuit, it is still going to have significant advantages.
This sounds like it has interesting ramifications for global politics. At the beginning of the Ukraine war, one major lever the Russian government had was to enable blackouts in Ukraine. Makes you wonder how a global power network could work in light of international conflict.
But the main one that is screaming at me for this technology sitting in front of us is SQUID sensors and RF antennas that will operate in the lower power range of the potential applications spectrum.
AFAIK loss at AC still occurs with superconductors because the dielectric loss through the materials still exists.
It could be a game changer for making efficient directional small receive antennas. Normally electrically small antennas are just super inefficient but it's made up for either on the transmit side (like with high power AM radio) or with most of the gain coming from some low noise amplifier (like small UHF wireless devices).
Of course if you can make wire out of it, I wonder how much smaller your fusion reactor can get?
There are a lot of applications for even a thin film, consider spray coating a resonant cavity with it.
I'm sure there is a way to improve almost anything you could think about if you start talking about making CPUs with lower heat dissipation, perhaps enabling 3D designs and much more efficient computing... [edit: obviously there is a limit from literally the entropy in computing and transistors are most of that, I wonder if the superconductor is a good thermal conductor...]
I'm sure there are at least 222 startups that have some idea they're pitching right now ;-)
Wildly improved efficiency on some sensors, antenna, motors, etc.
So, long distance electricity transmission, motors, generators, MRI machines and magnetic confinement nuclear fusion reactors for example.
That said, the material as synthesized might not be very good for some particular application. The current handling capacity might not be good enough, or it might not be physically strong enough to use as motor windings.
I don't know enough to do the comparison, but I'd be curious how this new material holds up when compared to copper or aluminum wire in terms of current capacity, weight, strength, and cost of materials. One of the big reasons for skepticism about humanity's prospects for converting to a non-fossil-fuel based energy system is that there just isn't enough of the important metal resources to build all the batteries/EVs/transmission lines/solar panels/windmills we need. I myself am skeptical of the skeptics because I think the resource bottlenecks are overstated and there are usually acceptable workarounds, but I do think copper is going to be in very high demand over then next several decades. If we have a good, cheap copper alternative then that solves that problem. (It also introduces another, as we would then have to deal with enormous quantities of lead-based cabling.)
Near term may be useful for devices which take advantage of quantum effects such as Superconducting QUantum interference devices or SQUIDs.
Use in microelectronics may be possible, but is likely quite difficult. Making complicated structures out of this material will require radically new microelectronic manufacturing processes. HTSC microelectronics don't exist as far as I can tell.
If critical field can be improved things get interesting. If it can be increased to that of known HTSCs at liquid nitrogen temperatures(critical field scales with temperature), that's interesting because this material should be cheaper.
If it can be increased moderately at room temperature, there is the potential for it replacing rare earth magnets because the material should be cheaper.
"Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!” --Venkman
FAA says even superconducting superdrones can't go over 400 feet.
But there is plenty of magnetic levitation right now without power:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N2Z9QAP
also, balloons.
In general, the answer to this question is "no."