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arXiv:2307.12037cond-mat.supr-con

Superconductor Pb$_{10-x}$Cu$_x$(PO$_4$)$_6$O showing levitation at room temperature and atmospheric pressure and mechanism

Sukbae Lee, Jihoon Kim, Hyun-Tak Kim, Sungyeon Im, SooMin An, Keun Ho Auh

Abstract

A material called LK-99, a modified-lead apatite crystal structure with the composition Pb$_{10-x}$Cu$_x$(PO$_4$)$_6$O ($0.9<x<1.1$), has been synthesized using the solid-state method. The material exhibits the Ohmic metal characteristic of Pb(6s1) above its superconducting critical temperature, $T_c$, and the levitation phenomenon as Meissner effect of a superconductor at room temperature and atmospheric pressure below $T_c$. A LK-99 sample shows $T_c$ above 126.85$^\circ$C (400 K). We analyze that the possibility of room-temperature superconductivity in this material is attributed to two factors: the first being the volume contraction resulting from an insulator-metal transition achieved by substituting Pb with Cu, and the second being on-site repulsive Coulomb interaction enhanced by the structural deformation in the one-dimensional(D) chain (Cu$^{2+}$-O$_{1/2}$-Cu$^{2+}$ along the c-axis) structure owing to superconducting condensation at $T_c$. The mechanism of the room-temperature $T_c$ is discussed by 1-D BR-BCS theory.

arXiv comments
18 pages, 7 figures
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cond-mat.supr-conSuperconductivity

On Hacker News

Linked by 10 identifiable commenters in 14 comments across 8 threads, from Jul 2023 to Aug 2023. Found in 2 HN submissions from Jul 2023 to Aug 2023. Open submission discussions.

Comments linking this paper, per year.

Discussed in comments8 threads

    • They measured the resistivity of a pure Cu2S sample, a sample S1 containing 95% LK-99 and 5% Cu, and a sample S2 containing 30% LK-99 and 70% Cu2S. The resistivity of the Cu2S sample has a drop of 3 to 4 orders of magnitude at about 390K (when temperature decreases). In the S2…

      hgrbrmView on HNParent context

    • These are just how they wrote their own names in arXiv papers [1]. I don't know about Young-Wan Kwon, but Hyun-Tak Kim is a research professor in US university and should have settled on that matter. After all I'm also Korean and I prefer my name to be written as "Kang…

      lifthrasiirView on HNParent context

    • How do you explain the almost three orders of magnitude drop in resistance in Fig. 6d in one of the original articles ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.12037.pdf ) with a few LK-99 particles sprinkled here an there? There must be a current path along which more than 99.8% of the…

      hgrbrmView on HNParent context

    • I just wrote a comment in another thread that's relevant here too. It looks like the first superconductor paper was released by a rouge researcher, without the agreement of the other two authors or the rest of the LK-99 group. This forced the LK-99 group to rush to publish the…

      joefiguraView on HNParent context

    • This comment intrigued me, so I pulled together some information. The first paper submitted is titled "The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor." It lists three authors: Sukbae Lee, Ji-Hoon Kim, and Young-Wan Kwon. Its timestamp is Saturday, July 22, 2023 at…

      joefiguraView on HNParent context

    • As far as I can tell, https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008 is the paper by the original group and https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037 is the paper they wrote with an outsider. Their chosen independent outsider is Hyun-Tak Kim.

      sanxiynView on HNParent context

    • There was another in the same day [0], funny. Maybe it really did happen. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037

      beanjuiceView on HNParent context

    • One of the authors in a related paper[1] is Hyun-Tak Kim. He has many publications in peer-reviewed journals[2]. One even has > 1500 citations[3]. I can't tell if there is a catch anywhere, this seems pretty legitimate. Also, unlike some previous claims that required…

      sheepscreekView on HNParent context

    • The method to produce this material as described in the related paper [1] is fairly simple and could be done at home with a $200 home metal melting furnace from amazon and the precursors (which also seem to be fairly standard easy to obtain metals). If this is real, I'd expect…

      obblekkView on HNParent context

    • A sister paper [0] has a photo of the material exhibiting the Meisner effect and levitating over a magnet, and claims to have a video too. Either they blatantly photoshopped the photo or they actually made a room temperature super conductor. I can’t see how the could have made a…

      eigView on HNParent context

    • But they've trademarked the name KL-99 (®) in their follow-up paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.12037.pdf

      botroView on HNParent context

    • On page 4 they list two equivalent criteria for superconductivity: "the electric field criterion with 1 μV/cm or 0.1 μV/cm and resistivity criterion with 10^-11 Ω·cm." On the same page they write: "In various bulk samples, specific resistance was measured in the range of 10^-6…

      hgrbrmView on HNParent context

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