SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AT HIGHEST TEMPERATURE

Recent record: 

• In a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers at the University of Chicago in the US have said that they have broken the record for highest-temperature superconductor. 
  
  
• They studied a class of materials – superconducting hydrides – in which they observed superconductivity at temperatures of about minus 23 degrees Celsius, a jump of about 50 degrees compared to the previous confirmed record. 
  
  
• For this, researchers created one of these materials, called lanthanum superhydrides to test its superconductivity, and determine its structure and composition. 
  
  

Significance: 

• Scientists have previously only been able to create superconducting materials when they are cooled to extremely cold temperatures initially, minus 240 degrees Celsius and more recently about minus 73 degrees Celsius. 
  
  
• Since such cooling is expensive, it has limited their applications in the world at large. 
  
  
• Though the recent superconductivity happened under extremely high pressure, the result still represents a big step towards creating superconductivity at room temperature, the ultimate goal for scientists to be able to use this phenomenon for advanced technologies.  
  
  
• The potential uses for this are vast: electrical wires without diminishing currents, extremely fast supercomputers and efficient magnetic levitation trains.