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| Inside a clean room, physicists Ivan Bozovic (left) and Anthony Bollinger, Brookhaven, work on the molecular beam epitaxy system that produced the atomically perfect materials used in the study. Credit: Brookhaven National Lab |
Objects or materials that have been super-cooled or its temperature lowered below a certain value, it achieves superconductivity. Temperatures required to achieve superconductivity usually are close to absolute zero (0 Kelvin). This means that there is no electrical resistance and there is an expulsion of magnetic fields occurring at that temperature.
This expulsion is a quantum mechanical property that is described by the Meissner effect.
As the temperature is lowered, the electrical resistance goes down as well. Below a critical temperature, the electrical resistance of a superconductor lowers down to zero. Without it, an electric current can persist indefinitely even without a power source. There is no power loss and that any existing power in a superconductive wire will forever flow in it.
Last September 2012, a team from the University of Toronto induced high temperature superconductivity in a semiconductor just by using Scotch tape. A first for physics.
Recently, researchers have developed HTS materials that would help them understand this phenomenon by recreating it and studying fluctuations within the material called charge density waves.
