Superconductors: Twisted and Crushed

Superconductivity is quantum mechanical phase of matter where in electrical currents can be carried with literally zero resistance. As quite a lot of electrical energy is dissipated by the distribution and transmission of electricity, superconducting wires would save a lot of money - and a lot of wasted energy generation. Superconducting wires are already in use for industrial surge protection.

Unfortunately for carriers, superconductivity has historically been the domain of very low temperature physics. Even so-called "high temperature superconductors" operate at liquid nitrogen temperatures: about -321F (-196C). So the discovery of room temperature super conductors last year was a big deal. As you might expect, those cold temperatures were traded for something equally as inconvenient - massive pressures. The room temperature superconductor needed to operate while crushed between two diamonds.

Charlie Wood - ever on the superconductivity beat - posted another story this week at Quanta Magazine. In it, he describes how combining multiple layers of graphene - slightly out of alignment - resulted in a pairing of electrons (or more correctly, their electric fields) into a sort of bosonic vortex or "skryimon". These pairs possess just the right sort of quantum mechanical properties that afford superconductivity.

As superconductors are notoriously difficult to model with precision, these graphene solutions pave the way for a theoretical understanding that, to quote Wood quoting Harvard Physicist Subir Sachdev:

"If you get the same skyrmion physics on the [atomic] scale,” Sachdev said, 'then you could really use this.'"