MOSCOW - A group of scientists led by Artem Oganov of Skoltech and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and Ivan Troyan of the Institute of Crystallography of RAS has succeeded in synthesizing thorium decahydride (ThH10), a new superconducting material with the very high critical temperature of 161 kelvins. The results of their study, supported by a Russian Science Foundation grant, were published in the journal Materials Today, reports Phys.org. Continue reading original article
The Intelligent Aerospace take:
November 8, 2019-In the study published by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, researchers have shown that thorium decahydride is a capable superconductor at cryogenic temperatures, but it may also come out of the deep freeze to be implemented into electronics.
"We discovered that superconductivity predicted in theory does exist at −112 C and 0.7 million atmospheres," study co-director Ivan Troyan said. "Given the strong consistency between theory and experiment, it would be interesting to check whether ThH10 will show superconductivity at up to −30 C, −40 C and lower pressures as predicted."
"Thorium hydride is just one of the elements in a large and rapidly growing class of hydride superconductors," said the first author of the study, Skoltech Ph.D. student Dmitry Semenok. "I believe that in the coming years, hydride superconductivity will expand beyond the cryogenic range to find application in the design of electronic devices."
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Jamie Whitney, Associate Editor
Intelligent Aerospace
