Category Technology/Electronics

This is a schematic image of the crystal structure of high-entropy-alloy-type REO0.5F0.5BiS2. Credit: Yoshikazu Mizuguchi

Promising strategy for creating state-of-the-art layered superconductors. Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created new superconductors made of layers of bismuth sulfide (BiS2) and a high entropy rare earth alloy oxyfluoride, containing 5 different rare earth (RE) elements at the same crystallographic site. The new material retains superconducting properties over a wider range of lattice parameters than materials without high-entropy-alloy states. Their work promises an exciting new strategy for designing new layered superconductors, a potentially key development in the search for high-temperature superconductors.

Superconductors are key to a range of ...

A PLATED QUBIT DEVICE. PHOTO: D. PAPAS/NIST

A powerful new plated metal combination that superconducts at easily attained temperatures could pave the road for the next critical steps in the development of cutting-edge supercomputers. CIRES chemist and instrument designer Don David and colleagues Dave Pappas and Xian Wu just published the new recipe: an ultrathin layer of rhenium sandwiched between layers of gold, each measuring 1/1000th the diameter of a human hair that can superconduct at critical temperature over 6 Kelvin.

“The sheer magnitude of the critical temperature was unexpected,” said Don David, director of the CIRES Integrated Instrument Development Facility and coauthor on a paper published this week in Applied Physics Letters...

The potential of this discovery in terms of reducing energy use and therefore our energy bills is really exciting. Dr Lidija Šiller, joint lead author, Newcastle University

Experts have created a new form of highly-efficient, low-cost, sustainable insulation based on the wings of a dragonfly. The material, known as an aerogel, is the most porous material known to man and ultralight, with a piece the size of a family car weighing less than a kilogram. Starting out as a wet silica gel, similar in structure to jelly, the material is carefully dried to create a strong, porous material...