Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the hot topic of room temperature superconductor LK-99. Developed in South Korea, this superconductor has received a lot of attention, but its successful reproduction has been questioned. A recent article published in the journal Nature explains these questions in detail.(Original article)
Summary of the Nature article
- Academic amateurs have tried to recreate the LK-99, but unofficial results have been lackluster.
- No direct evidence was presented.
- Researchers in India and China succeeded in synthesizing it, but found no signs of superconductivity.
- The jury is still out on whether LK-99 is a true room temperature superconductor.
Is it a room temperature superconductor?
No study has proven that LK-99 is actually a room temperature superconductor. Research efforts aimed at this proof are currently underway. However, this is a very complex process, as there are still many open questions to predict the outcome.
Thinking about reproducibility
Notably, researchers at the Indian National Physical Laboratory and Beihang University in China have manufactured LK-99, but have found no evidence of superconductivity. In addition, LK-99, manufactured by researchers at Southeast University in China, was observed to lose its resistance at minus 163 degrees Fahrenheit, but there is some debate about whether it can be considered a room-temperature superconductor.
Theoretical approach
Theoretical studies are also being attempted to understand the properties of LK-99. There are studies that use density functional theory (DFT) to calculate the electronic structure of LK-99, but the validity of the results is controversial.
Voices from the real world of research
Professor Leslie Scoop, a solid-state chemist at Princeton University in the US, has argued that no DFT result can be trusted until the exact crystal structure is known. Dr. Sinead Griffin also clarified that while her research on LK-99 found the presence of a flatband structure, this does not prove that LK-99 is a room temperature superconductor.
Social reactions
While superconductor claims have been made in the past, LK-99 has received unprecedented attention. But while these claims have made headlines, they have also sparked interest in unproven theories.
Calling it an “unidentified superconducting object” (USO), Professor Ina Bishk, an expert in condensed matter physics at the University of California, Davis, USA, concluded after some thought that it was not, and criticized the regularity with which such claims appear on the research site Archive.
