Magnetic field sorting of superconducting graphite particles with Tc>400K
12 comments
·February 13, 2025radioactivist
The idea that graphite may contain in inclusions that are superconducting at room temperature is highly speculative (putting it mildly) and not an idea that is taken seriously in the condensed matter physics community.
dvh
I think the idea behind it is really clever. You don't know how to manufacture the material. Create a test that separates the good particles. Sieve through mountain of crushed material, out comes small amount of good stuff. Genius.
vlovich123
So we’ve gone from the best semiconductor we can manage is -73 degrees C at huge pressures to we can do it past water boiling? This is a huge leap forward no?
> It suggests that, if the Aquadag paint instead of being fabricated from normal graphite particles is made from the sorted superconducting ones, we would obtain a superconducting paint whose resistance might be possibly zero above room temperature allowing for the design of superconducting circuits at room temperature
There must be some nuance here that requires some expertise to understand since I would think Tc up to 500K is way above room temperature but they’re being very cautious about saying they could build such circuits. Is that because circuit manufacturing is an even higher temperature process or something else?
This seems like a revolutionary result that’s the first step in changing everything we do in electronics from computers to travel. What’s the reason to contain excitement?
boothby
They're claiming to have found a small number of microscopic particles that are superconducting at 500K, with details on how they found those particles. They acknowledge that making contact with those particles to directly test their resistivity is particularly challenging. That is, even if this is true, there's a long road between the discovery of microscopic particles and mass manufacturing / large scale integration.
It would be quite inappropriate for them to brag about revolutionizing anything at this stage. The field recently witnessed that with overstated claims surrounding LK99. Much more appropriate to publish methods and allow other groups to verify or refute their findings.
dcre
This is from October 2024 and appears to have made no splash whatsoever, which probably tells you what you need to know about it.
mapt
Is magnetic field sorting a novel method for superconductors in general?
metalman
all of the standard caviats apply of course, but the premise is in itself worthy of attention and fits in with a great deal of the background work in all of human technology ,ie: " wait, wait some of this stuff is different, look there, there it did a THING", its how our ancient ancestors got us ceramics and metals and glass. And the history of white light led's started with exceptionaly rare, fluke, white light led's, that eventualy were proven to be the result of very tiny amounts of "contamenents" that produced the effect, took them decades to narrow it down, and figure it out, and then scale up to production levels. Now the research tools are, way better, smaller, cheaper, and in thousands of labs world wide....so
null
waynenilsen
lk99 v2.0.0
400k ~ 260f / 127c
There are a lot of skeptical comments here, but the authors make this claim in the abstract:
> We have obtained a concentrate of above room temperature superconducting particles.
Is this just a lie?