
Possible light-induced superconductivity in K3C60 at high temperature - jonbaer
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature16522.html
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raziel2701
I read the paper, they're interpreting their results in the most fashionable
way possible to get published, which is that maybe they're exciting K3C60 into
a superconducting state. Of course this state is transitory. Essentially they
shoot light into it and they excite a state, and they say that this state is a
superconducting one. Of course since it's a non-equilibrium state the system
quickly relaxes into a non-superconducting one. The authors are completely
aware that other interpretations could also explain what they see, but of
course the sexiest one is to guess that it's a superconducting state,
triggered by light, at a temperature higher than K3C60 Tc ~ 20 K.

So, nothing solid, just some data, and a very fanciful interpretation of this
in order to create excitement.

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semi-extrinsic
From reading the abstract, this is doing the same as reported in a 2014 paper
in Phys. Rev. B by many of the same authors [1], but with a different material
(K3C60). In [1] they propose the hypothesis (hence "possible" in the title
here) that:

"the light establishes a transient superconducting state over only a fraction
of the solid, with a lifetime of a few picoseconds"

While certainly an interesting piece of solid-state physics, I don't think it
brings us much (if any) closer to useful-for-transporting-electricity room-
temperature superconductors. (It could certainly be useful for other things
though.)

[1]
[http://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.89.184...](http://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.89.184516)

Edit: this group also had a similar paper in Science in 2011 that might also
be of interest:
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/189](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/189)

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Animats
C60, as in a buckyball? Caging 3 potassium atoms? C60 doped with potassium is
known to be a superconductor below 18K [1], but that's not "high temperature".

[1]
[http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/buckball/buckball.html](http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/buckball/buckball.html)

~~~
snissn
fta:
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/carousel/...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/carousel/nature16522-f1.jpg)

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paulmd
I'm not a physicist - but it sounds like this material has the properties of
not only a high-temperature superconductor, but also of a semiconductor. I
would think that such a material would be extraordinarily useful.

~~~
dogma1138
The search for high temp superconductors is mostly done in the realm of
semiconductors so this isn't that surprising.

Also I find the term high temperature superconductor a bit funny considering
we are still talking anout <50 kelvin temperature 20k is still -250 or so C so
while it's very interesting it's not like it's going to revolutionize
electronics.

~~~
sarciszewski
EDIT: Nevermind my correction, I misread.

\------

I had an idea to produce room-temperature superconductivity, but I haven't
been able to find any similar research so I've largely dismissed it as a crazy
idea borne out of ignorance of the finer details of electrical engineering
and/or physics.

One day, I'll probably set up an experiment to test my idea, and if it works,
probably just drop it into a blog post and submit it to HN (where it will fade
into obscurity like most of the articles under the "new" link). And if it
doesn't, it will be a good cautionary tale for anyone with the same wrong idea
about how the world works.

~~~
mrfusion
That's awesome. It seems like you'd need a pretty good knowledge of the
physics to even come up with an idea. I'd love to hear about it if you want to
shoot me an email.

I actually have a similar thing where it seems like I've got an idea for a
better battery but I have to assume I'm just missing some basic physics.

~~~
sarciszewski
I sent you the gist of it in an email. It's not really that clever, nor
something that a typical AA undergrad wouldn't be able to come up with. Hence,
I don't put a lot of stock into my own idea.

But if it just so happens to work, that'd be hilarious.

