Near-room-temperature superconductivity in hydrogen sulfide

Room-temperature superconductivity has been a long-held dream and an area of intensive research, despite the common belief—based on more than a century of work in the field—that the highest temperature at which phonon-mediated superconductors can work is only 40 K. Drozdov et al.¹ of the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany, has reported surpassing this traditional limit, demonstrating that hydrogen sulfide under a pressure of 1.5 million atmospheres exhibits phonon-mediated superconductivity at 203 K. This discovery opens the door to achieving room-temperature superconductivity in compressed hydrogen-rich materials.