Weird Superconductor Leads Double Life
Understanding strontium titanate’s odd behavior will aid efforts to develop materials that conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at higher temperatures.
Until about 50 years ago, all known superconductors were metals. This made sense, because metals have the largest number of loosely bound “carrier” electrons that are free to pair up and flow as electrical current with no resistance and 100 percent efficiency – the hallmark of superconductivity.
Then an odd one came along – strontium titanate, the first oxide material and first semiconductor found to be superconducting. Even though it doesn’t fit the classic profile of a superconductor – it has very few free-to-roam electrons – it becomes superconducting when conditions are right, although no one could explain why.
Now scientists have probed the superconducting behavior of its electrons in detail for the first time. They discovered it’s even weirder than they thought. Yet that’s good news, they said, because it gives them a new angle for thinking about what’s known as “high temperature” superconductivity, a phenomenon that could be harnessed for a future generation of perfectly efficient power lines, levitating trains and other revolutionary technologies.
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