Prepare a 200- to 300-word history about the National Critical Technology (NCT) technical application your team has selected to solve a local or national problem.

"...mercury at 4.2K has entered a new state, which owing to its particular electrical properties, can be called the state of superconductivity." -- Heike Kamerlingh Onnes’s 1913 Nobel lecture

"A momentous discovery (1911) was that of the superconductivity of pure metals such as mercury, tin and lead at very low temperatures, and following from this the observation of persisting currents." - From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam Heike Kamerling Onnes

          In 1908, Professor Heike Kamerlingh Onnes refined special methods of refrigeration that would offer him the capability to cool temperatures beyond that of conventional methods. In 1911, he observed that mercury’s resistance disappeared when cooled to 4K. A new field had been unleashed. He won the 1913 Nobel Prize for his research in the area of "supraconducting", as he termed it. In 1933, Walter Meissner and Robert Oschsenfeld discovered that superconductors will exclude magnetic fields. Today, it is acknowledged as the Meissner effect (or perfect diamagnetism). A breakthrough in theoretical understanding was achieved in 1957 by American physicists John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and John Schrieffer.

(From left to right) American physicists John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and John Schrieffer.

          Their theory, the BCS theory, provided for the explanation of the phenomenon of superconductivity for simplistic materials at temperatures close to absolute zero; however, it is still unable to explicate how high-temperature superconductivity works. The 1980s resulted in an explosion of development in this fledgling field. In 1980, the first organic superconductor was synthesized. The year of 1986 is known for the incredible event spearheaded by researchers of IBM. Alex Muller and George Bednorz created a remarkable superconducting ceramic compound that set the record of critical temperature at the time: 30K. After this breakthrough, researchers set upon a mad dash for the sole purpose of generating a ceramic that would yield higher and higher Tc’s.

"Professor Alex K. Müller, codiscoverer of high temperature superconductivity and winner of the Noble Prize in Physics for this work, visits the National Laboratory at Los Alamos."

One - Two - Three

"Professor Alex Müller, ETH-Zurich. Dean Peterson, Our Technical Advisor and Center Leader, and several staff members gave him a tour of the facilities in the Los Alamos Research Park."

          In 1987, professors from the University of Houston and Alabama reported that they found a substance of yttrium-barium-copper-oxide (YBCO) superconducting at approximately above 90K. Significantly, a material had been finally found that can superconduct at a temperature about that of liquid nitrogen (allowing for inexpensive cooling). In 1994, a Tc of 183K attained by a thallium-doped mercuric cuprate material has been confirmed. After the discovery of high temperature superconductivity, an astonishing number of developments occurred in areas of new materials, material fabrication, and theory.

"Superconductors are one of the last great frontiers of scientific discovery."

©2004 OSSM Enid Regional Center
Best viewed in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4+ and in 1024x768 resolution.