Posted on 04/06/2008 9:42:02 AM PDT by LibWhacker
ARGONNE, Ill. (April 4, 2008) – Superinsulation may sound like a marketing gimmick for a drafty attic or winter coat. But it is actually a newly discovered fundamental state of matter created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with several European institutions. This discovery opens new directions of inquiry in condensed matter physics and breaks ground for a new generation of microelectronics.
Led by Argonne senior scientist Valerii Vinokur and Russian scientist Tatyana Baturina, an international team of scientists from Argonne, Germany, Russia and Belgium fashioned a thin film of titanium nitride which they then chilled to near absolute zero. When they tried to pass a current through the material, the researchers noticed that its resistance suddenly increased by a factor of 100,000 once the temperature dropped below a certain threshold. The same sudden change also occurred when the researchers decreased the external magnetic field.
Like superconductors, which have applications in many different areas of physics, from accelerators to magnetic-levitation (maglev) trains to MRI machines, superinsulators could eventually find their way into a number of products, including circuits, sensors and battery shields.
If, for example, a battery is left exposed to the air, the charge will eventually drain from it in a matter of days or weeks because the air is not a perfect insulator, according to Vinokur. "If you pass a current through a superconductor, then it will carry the current forever; conversely, if you have a superinsulator, then it will hold a charge forever," he said.
"Titanium nitride films, as well as films prepared from some other materials, can be either superconductors or insulators depending on the thickness of the film," Vinokur said. "If you take the film which is just on the insulating side of the transition and decrease the temperature or magnetic field, then the film all of a sudden becomes a superinsulator."
Scientists could eventually form superinsulators that would encapsulate superconducting wires, creating an optimally efficient electrical pathway with almost no energy lost as heat. A miniature version of these superinsulated superconducting wires could find their way into more efficient electrical circuits.
Titanium nitride's sudden transition to a superinsulator occurs because the electrons in the material join together in twosomes called Cooper pairs. When these Cooper pairs of electrons join together in long chains, they enable the unrestricted motion of electrons and the easy flow of current, creating a superconductor. In superinsulators, however, the Cooper pairs stay separate from each other, forming self-locking roadblocks.
"In superinsulators, Cooper pairs avoid each other, creating enormous electric forces that oppose penetration of the current into the material," Vinokur said. "It's exactly the opposite of the superconductor," he added.
The theory behind the experiment stemmed from Argonne's Materials Theory Institute, which Vinokur organized six years ago in the laboratory's Materials Science Division. The MTI hosts a handful of visiting scholars from around the world to perform cutting-edge research on the most pressing questions in condensed matter physics. Upon completion of their tenure at Argonne, these scientists return to their home institutions but continue to collaborate on the joint projects. The MTI attracts the world's best condensed matter scientists, including Russian "experimental star" Tatyana Baturina, who, according to Vinokur, "became a driving force in our work on superinsulators."
Scientists from the Institute of Semiconductor Physics in Novosibirsk, Russia, Regensburg and Bochum universities in Germany and Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre in Leuven, Belgium, also participated in the research.
The research appears in the April 3 issue of Nature.
Funding for the experiment came principally from the Novosibirsk Institute of Semiconductor Physics and the University of Regensberg. The Basic Energy Sciences Division of the Department of Energy's Office of Science and Argonne Materials Theory Institute also contributed in part to the research.
Expect a Nobel prize here.
(You heard it here first.)
Nobel prize? This is a true discovery that will benefit mankind, Nobel prizes are only given to fake phoney frauds like Al Gore and his unproven but largely personal and profitable global warming scam.
We may be on the verge of the next processing breakthrough. The reason (as I understand it) that we’ve been essentially stuck at the 3GHz line is due to our reaching the practical limit of silicon’s insulation abilities.
The physics, chemistry and medicine prizes are legit. The economics are 50-50, and the peace is 100% B.S. This will be in physics.
Does this mean that cars (and so forth) will some day be powered by batteries that never need to be recharged? Or is that pie-in-the-sky?
So in order to be superconductor it has to be cooled to absolute zero. And this is useful how?
The reason we’ve been stuck at 3 GHz is because of many chip designers being lazy on circuits and layout. In the past, they got speedups for free thanks to scaling. Now they have to work for it, and they just want to take the easier - but incomplete - path of parallelism instead.
one question is whether or not this can create protective barriers against electromagnetic pulse weapons.
A redundantly designed circuit with a superinsulator packet as a back-up might keep jets flying, cars running, etc. should an EMP weapon be exploded somewhere.
Well...yes... -- as long as you don't use them...
Thanks. So if one has “a battery that holds a charge forever” - forever merely means until he uses it. :)
“If, for example, a battery is left exposed to the air, the charge will eventually drain from it in a matter of days or weeks because the air is not a perfect insulator, according to Vinokur. “If you pass a current through a superconductor, then it will carry the current forever; conversely, if you have a superinsulator, then it will hold a charge forever,” he said.”
No. You pull energy out of a battery to run a motor, you’ve used it. But it DOES mean efficient, hi-capacity batteries with rapid charging to run electric vehicles. And without self-draining overnight. . .
Now, that sounds right. The day eventually had to come when we’d get an improvement in batteries so as to make electric cars more practical. This is probably just the beginning of what’s coming down the pike.
No, it would mean that much less of each charge would be lost by leakage before being used. We would be able to use the new generation of supercapacitors in place of inefficient chemical batteries. Capacitors the size of AA cells that hold 3300 farads are already on the market, but the charge leaks away fairly quickly.
Thanks! This is really an exciting development.
Efficiency is always useful.
Though now I want a superinsulating power source running a supercoducting pump motor to move a superfliud liquid to get me to the grocery store.
This is a major threshold of understanding. At one time, superconductivity was only known to occur at absolute zero...now it is found at liquid nitrogen temperatures (and liquid nitrogen is cheaper than milk). One would hope that superinsulation could likewise be found at warmer temperatures.
Batteries that are used in any application will always need to be re-charged - that's a fundamental law. The 'battery' part mentioned refers to the possibility that some 'new' kind of insulation from this materials-discovery may someday allow a battery to be made that will 'hold its' charge' for a very-long-time - like 30 years or so, unlike todays' 'Duracell', that, even if never used, will go-dead in about 8 years.
Hope that helps, babe ............. FRegards
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