
IPFS News Link • Energy
Where Will Practical Room Temperature Superconductors Matter?
• https://www.nextbigfuture.com, by Brian WangThis would mean superconducting wires and magnets that would not need special cooling. Depending upon your application you might still want to cool the system but you could use regular refrigerants.
We had a large breakthrough decades ago with YCBO ceramic superconductors that could operate with only liquid nitrogen cooling. The wires made were brittle so that production was difficult. Quantum computers based upon superconducting chips do not use YCBO they use silicon and nobium and cool the chips to near absolute zero. If the new materials can replace nobium for superconducting computer chips and be scaled up then this would be huge for regular computers.
The US Navy, NASA and Japanese companies have been working to make engines for ships and planes smaller and more powerful. This work is described after the superconducting computer project.
The key to unlocking these applications is having the new materials be easy to work with, low cost and durable. If we can thousands or millions of tons per year then we can make computers 100 times faster, 1000 times less power, engines and motors of all kinds 4 times lighter and more efficient. The materials would need to have higher power to weight ratios.
This will also help nuclear fusion and quantum computer projects but our everyday world would be impacted more if we could replace silicon for chips. Limited supplies of materials would mean high priority supercomputer projects would get the new chips first. Also, more powerful engines would go into space and aerospace projects first.