DOE Science Showcase - Understanding High-Temperature Superconductors

Credit: DOE

Scientists have long worked to understand one of the great mysteries of modern physics - the origin and behavior of high-temperature superconductors (HTS) that are uniquely capable of transmitting electricity with zero loss when chilled to subzero temperatures.  For decades there have been competing theories and misunderstandings of how HTS materials actually work and they have remained fundamentally puzzling to physicists. Solving this mystery has the potential to revolutionize the planet’s energy infrastructure from generation to transmission and grid-scale storage. Recent technical breakthroughs in this quest are being discovered by DOE scientists and their collaborators. Read about HTS technology, basic science and progress towards theory in Dr. William Watson’s white paper In the OSTI Collections – High-Temperature Superconductors.  

 

Additional links of Interest

• DOE’s Superconductivity Program Overview
• DOE’s High-Temperature Superconductivity Partners
• DOE Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability
• 10 things you may not know about superconductivity, Argonne National Laboratory
• ORNL superconducting wire yields unprecedented performance, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Center for Emergent Superconductivity, Energy Frontier Research Center
• Vortex pinning could lead to superconducting breakthroughs, Argonne National Laboratory
• Scientists Discover Hidden Magnetic Waves in High-Temperature Superconductors, Brookhaven National Laboratory        About the National Synchrotron Light Source II
• Interface Superconductivity Withstands Variations in Atomic Configuration, Brookhaven National Laboratory

 

Selected HTS Research Information from DOE Databases

• Open problems in condensed matter physics, 1987, Scitech Connect
• Decades of Discovery – Unraveling the Mysteries of High-Temperature Superconductors, DOE Accomplishments Database
• Superconductivity at Dawn of the Iron Age, Scitech Connect
• Electrons and Phonons in High Temperature Superconductors (Hindawi Publishing), Science Open Access Journals (SOAJ)
• High Temperature Superconductors: From Delivery to Applications (Presentation from 2011 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award-winner, Dr. Amit Goyal, and including introduction by former Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu,  ScienceCinema
• How Electron Spectroscopy with Synchrotron Light can help us understand High-Temperature Superconductors, ScienceCinema
• High temperature interfacial superconductivity, Scitech Connect

 

 

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