The search for high‐temperature superconductors

AUG 01, 1971

Although superconductivity at room temperature will always remain a pipedream, temperatures as high as 25–30 K are a realistic possibility and will trigger a technological revolution.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3022880

Bernd T. Matthias

Since 1911 superconductivity at room temperature has been the dream of scientists and science‐fiction writers alike. Unfortunately for superconductivity, the boundary between these two dream worlds has become totally blurred during the last decade. Still, today, superconductivity at room temperature together with controlled thermonuclear fusion are often mentioned as the two most important and crucial problems in physics relevant to the needs of society. Controlled fusion has now become a distinct possibility, and its progress over the last twenty years has covered many orders of magnitude. During this same time, superconducting transition temperatures have expanded from a range of 0.4 K to 16 K to a range stretching from 0.0002 K to 21 K. If this upper limit could be further increased, not by another order of magnitude, but by a factor of as little as 1.2, or as large as 1.5, superconductivity, while still far from room temperature, would revolutionize our technology. This revolution would encompass electric power transmission, electric motors, high‐field electromagnets, and the metallurgy of magnetic suspensions as a whole. In this article I will explain why I believe that this factor of 1.5 is a distinct possibility. I will also explain why room‐temperature superconductivity (regardless of a thousand statements by theorists and an equal number of theories) is—in my opinion—pure science fiction.

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More about the Authors

Bernd T. Matthias. University of California, San Diego, and Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J..