We believe that our new development will be a new historical event that will open a new era for humanity.” You must be very sure of the work done to conclude the introduction of a research paper with this lapidary phrase. The scientific community is upset with the result of this work because, if it were true, some Korean researchers would have found the holy grail of materials science: a superconductor at ambient temperature and pressure conditions that, moreover, is relatively easy to create A dream.
Superconductors, which have so far only been achieved in laboratory conditions that are difficult to apply in real life, offer almost zero resistance to the passage of electric current. Such a discovery would make nuclear fusion reactors viable, a safe and virtually unlimited source of energy; it would facilitate the development of quantum computers; the loss of large amounts of energy in electrical transmission would be avoided; much more efficient batteries, and would lower the cost of MRI machines or magnetic levitation trains.
But the work is pending an independent review to corroborate the results. It has been published in two previous versions by Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, Young-Wan Kwon of the Quantum Energy Research Centre, and without yet being revised, describes the creation of a superconductor called LK-99. The material is created in 34 hours by replacing some lead atoms with copper ones.
What is achieved with the resulting material is to reproduce the tunnel effect, a phenomenon of quantum physics that violates those of classical mechanics, because a particle crosses a barrier that has a greater potential than the kinetic energy that the same particle Since it does not collide with any atoms, there is no resistance.
The authors of the work have also published a video in which a supposed Meissner effect is seen with a pill of LK-99, which consists of the levitation of superconducting material on a magnet, although some scientists have pointed out on social networks that the seen in the recording is diamagnetism, an effect in materials repelled by magnets.
Among the dubious observations made by researchers around the world is the fact that the authors have not published the critical temperature of LK-99, although they have noted that it is more than 127°C, because it is the maximum at which they have arrived and have not taken their tests any further. It would be normal for this precise data to be part of a work of this type.
The Korean researchers previously published a version of the paper in which three other colleagues participated, so some voices point to the coincidence that the Nobel Prize is only awarded to three people at the same time, and that such a revolutionary discovery would deserve, without doubt, this scientific award.
The work is based on a 2021 theoretical paper by Hyun-Tak Kim, co-author of that second document signed by six. The LK-99 is in a patent application granted in March and published in April.
In 2020 a group of researchers from the University of Rochester (United States) published a study in the journal Nature in which they claimed to have discovered superconductivity at room temperature. The journal retracted after it was discovered that they had manipulated experimental data.
After this experience, according to the Korean researchers, Nature refused to publish their work. The article has been sent this week to a magazine, ALP Materials, not very relevant from a scientific point of view. “We are a company, not a research institute, so we have to patent our technology and make money from it, but Nature and Science take too long, so we chose an easier way to publish it,” he say a researcher.