A considerable amount of energy is lost in traditional electrical lines, when the energy travels from its source to businesses and homes because of resistance. Superconductors are materials that have zero electric resistance when cooled. These materials can be used in the future to increase the efficiency of energy distribution.
Researchers from Ames Laboratory are working to unravel the secrets of exotic superconductors founded in 2008. The project also included scientists from University of Bristol, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Kyoto University in Japan and they discovered that magnetism may be responsible for superconductivity in materials like iron-based superconductors.
Ruslan Prozorov, who directed the team at Ames Lab, stated that in order to design superconductors for innovative technologies, the initial step is to understand how these superconductors operate. Most conventional methods of measuring material factors, like resistivity, are not essential in the superconductivity phase. However, a technique was developed to measure the length of magnetic field penetration into a superconductor material. The length is referred as London penetration depth, which is used to reveal the fundamental information about a material in the superconducting state.
The team performed a research on a barium-iron-arsenic-phosphorus material at near zero Kelvin. They measured London penetration depth and revealed that magnetism enables superconductivity in iron-based superconductors. These iron-based materials may allow the development of new energy technologies, stated Prozorov.