All articles

The reference has 10 articles. Every statement of fact carries a numbered source, listed at the end of its article.

• Room-temperature superconductorA room-temperature superconductor would carry electric current without resistance at about 293 to 300 K and ordinary atmospheric pressure. None is known. The record at one atmosphere is 133 to 138 K.
• SuperconductivitySuperconductivity is a state of matter in which a material carries electric current with no resistance and expels magnetic fields. It appears only below a critical temperature that depends on the material.
• Superconducting materialsSuperconductors fall into a few families, from niobium alloys that work near 4 K to cuprates above 130 K and hydrides near 250 K under pressure. Most applications use one of two niobium-based wires.
• High-pressure hydridesHydrogen-rich compounds that superconduct at up to about 250 K when squeezed to more than a million atmospheres in a diamond anvil cell. They hold the highest reproduced transition temperatures of any material.
• Applications of superconductorsSuperconductors are used in MRI scanners, particle accelerators, fusion magnets, power cables and quantum circuits, all of them cooled. A room-temperature superconductor would need no cooling but would still have to carry large currents.
• History of superconductivitySuperconductivity was discovered in mercury at 4.2 K in 1911. The highest reproduced transition temperature is now 133 to 138 K at ambient pressure and about 250 K under pressure.
• Claims of room-temperature superconductivityReports since the 1970s that a material superconducts at or near room temperature, and what became of each. Three were retracted, one was refuted within four weeks, and none has been independently reproduced.
• Verifying a superconductorThe measurements that establish a material as a superconductor, the effects that imitate them, and the reasons claims made at megabar pressure are hard to check.
• Predicting superconductorsConventional superconductors can be found by calculation: hydrides that superconduct above 200 K were computed before the measurements were published. For cuprates and some other unconventional superconductors no quantitative theory exists.
• GlossaryShort definitions of the technical terms used in the articles on room-temperature superconductivity, with typical values and links to the fuller articles.