Reviewed by Lexie CornerFeb 11 2025
Researchers at the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston have made progress in achieving high-temperature superconductivity at ambient pressure. This development could contribute to more energy-efficient technologies and advance the search for superconductors that function under practical conditions. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Professors Liangzi Deng and Paul Ching-Wu Chu from the UH Department of Physics examined whether BST could transition into a superconducting state under pressure without modifying its chemical composition or structural properties.
In 2001, scientists suspected that applying high pressure to BST changed its Fermi surface topology, leading to improved thermoelectric performance. That connection between pressure, topology, and superconductivity piqued our interest.
Liangzi Deng, Professor, Department of Physics, University of Houston
Paul Ching-Wu Chu said, “As materials scientist Pol Duwez once pointed out, most solids that are crucial to industry exist in a metastable state. The problem with that is many of the most exciting superconductors only work under pressure, making them difficult to study and even harder to use in practical applications.”
Deng and Chu developed the pressure-quench protocol (PQP), a method that successfully stabilizes BST’s high-pressure-induced superconducting states at ambient pressure. This approach eliminates the need for specialized high-pressure environments.
The ability to retain material phases that are typically only accessible under pressure provides a new pathway for both fundamental research and practical applications of superconducting materials.
Paul Ching-Wu Chu said, “This experiment clearly demonstrates that one may stabilize the high-pressure-induced phase at ambient pressure via a subtle electronic transition without a symmetry change, offering a novel avenue to retain the material phases of interest and values that ordinarily exist only under pressure. It should help our search for superconductors with higher transition temperatures.”
Interestingly, this experiment revealed a novel approach to discovering new states of matter that do not exist at ambient pressure originally or even under high-pressure conditions. It demonstrates that PQP is a powerful tool for exploring and creating uncharted regions of material phase diagrams.
Liangzi Deng, Professor, Department of Physics, University of Houston
Journal Reference:
Deng, L., et al. (2025) Creation, stabilization, and investigation at ambient pressure of pressure-induced superconductivity in Bi 0.5 Sb 1.5 Te 3. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2423102122.