A new model for high-temperature conductivity has been introduced by a team of scientists from the University of Miami (UM).
The team believes that the latest innovation may help achieve superconductivity at higher temperatures. Superconductors are made of specific metals or a combination of metals and have various applications, ranging from electric devices to wireless communications.Though the components have a broad range of applications, their potentials have temperature limitations.
Josef Ashkenazi, first author of the study and associate professor of physics atthe UM College of Arts and Sciences, stated that by understanding the way how superconductivity operates at higher temperatures, it will be easier for researchers to search for superconductors, and how to create them and combine them into new technologies.
The UM team is also working to develop materials that produce superconductivity in a less freezing environment or at higher temperatures. However, this technique can be highly expensive and complex, remarked Neil Johnson, co-author of the study and professor of physics. Hence, the researchers studied the transformation in a metal at the point when it stops working as a superconductor. They observed that there are high fluctuations in the group of electrons and the material shifts between two states: a superconductor and a non-superconductor.
The UM researchers, Johnson and Ashkenazi, discovered that just beyond the critical temperature, special quantum effects can be produced and create superposition of states that offer an effective glue, which aids in repairing a system and enables the emergence of superconducting behavior once again.
The innovative model, developed by UM researchers, combines elements at two levels: theoretically stringing together modules of many other existing superconductivity theories and physically drawing together the segments of the system at the quantum level.