Imagine a world in which free-floating electric vehicles charge wirelessly as they glide down highways, laptops are hundreds of times more powerful, and clean energy flows in limitless supply.
Such a future, experts say, hinges on the development of new superconductors, or materials capable of transmitting electricity with near-perfect efficiency. The problem? All known superconductors—from pure elements like lead, tin, and aluminum to exotic compounds like niobium–titanium—must be subjected to extreme cold or pressure to function, making them impractical for widespread use. More problematic still, scientists don't fully understand how these materials work, making it difficult to engineer better versions.
Superconductors have already made their way into MRI machines, particle accelerators, and electromagnetic levitating trains, but they are extraordinarily expensive and finicky. The real game changer, experts say, will be figuring out how to custom-design superconductors that are cheaper and more versatile.
Now a multidisciplinary team of Columbia researchers led by physicist Cory R. Dean is bringing the scientific community closer to that goal. In a recent study in Nature, the scientists demonstrated that a compound called tungsten diselenide, which has a crystalline structure, can be made to exhibit superconductivity when sliced into sheets just one or two atoms thick and then manipulated in precise ways.
The discovery marks one of the first times that scientists have induced superconductivity in a material by modifying its structure at the nanoscale, thus offering new clues about how to create the next generation of superconductors.
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