2008年6月6日
约翰·霍普金斯大学researchers and colleagues in China have unlocked some of the secrets of newly discovered iron-based high-temperature superconductors, research that could result in the design of better superconductors for use in industry, medicine, transportation and energy generation.
在今天发表在《自然》杂志上的一篇文章中，由约翰·霍普金斯大学（Johns Hopkins University）的雅各布·哈因物理学教授和材料研究科学与工程中心主任Chia-ling Chien领导的团队提供了见解。欧洲杯线上买球他们说，在一个新的基于铁的超导体家族中揭示了需要新的理论模型，他们说，这可以为可以在室温下运行的超导体开发铺平道路。
“在我们看来，新的基于铁的超导体披露了一种新的物理学，包含新的谜团，并可能使我们沿着未知的室温超导性途径，” Chien与Tingyong Chen和Zlatko Tesanovic合作进行了研究。约翰·霍普金斯（Johns Hopkins）和X.H.Chen和R.H. Liu的Hefei全国物理科学实验室和中国科学技术学系的物理学系。欧洲杯线上买球
Superconductors are materials that can carry electrical current without friction and as a result, don’t waste electrical energy generating heat. (Imagine your laptop computer or PC not getting warm when it is turned on.) This means that an electrical current can flow in a loop of superconducting wire forever without a power source. Today, superconductors are used in hospital MRI machines, as filters in cell phone base stations and in high-speed magnetic levitating trains. Unfortunately, most of today’s superconducting materials can only function and operate at extremely low temperatures, which means that they must be paired with expensive supercooling equipment. This presents researchers with a grand challenge: to find superconducting material that can operate at more “normal” temperatures.
“If superconductors could exist at room temperatures, the world energy crisis would be solved,” Chen said.
Chen解释说，尽管所有金属都包含传导电力的移动电子，但仅当两个具有相反“旋转”的电子配对时，金属才会成为超导体。超导能量“间隙”，即打破形成这样一对的两个电子之间的键所需的能量量，确定了超导状态的稳健性或强度。在低温下，这种能量差距最高，但是在超导性不再存在的温度下消失。
Chien说：“这种差距 - 其结构和温度依赖性 - 揭示了超导体的'灵魂'，这是我们实验中测得的。”
The team measured this gap and its temperature variation, revealing that the pairing mechanism in iron-based superconductors is different from the one in more traditional, copper-based, high-temperature superconductors. To the researchers’ surprise, their results were incompatible with some of the newly proposed theories in this mushrooming field.
特萨诺维奇说：“面对这一发现，很明显，我们需要重新检查旧的并发明一些新的理论模型。”“我预测，这些新的，基于铁的超导体将使我们的物理学家忙碌了很长一段时间。”
This research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Natural Science Foundation of China.