Next Big Question

The Advocates

Allan MacDonald, Quantum Materials, Advisory Committee

Louis Taillefer, Quantum Materials, Program Director

The Pitch

Superconducting materials have a number of fascinating and potentially highly useful properties, including the power to conduct electricity without resistance and the capacity to create powerful magnetic fields. Superconductors exhibit a “coherent” form of electricity, much as a laser exhibits a coherent form of light. These properties hold enormous technological implications – for power transmission, levitating high-speed trains, magnetic medical imaging, wireless communications and quantum computing.

But there is a problem: Superconductors only work at very low temperatures. Some materials need to be cooled just a few degrees above absolute zero – about -250°C – in order to exhibit superconductivity. Others, known as “high-temperature superconductors” only need to be cooled to a balmy -140°C. Both types of superconductors require cumbersome cooling systems that are expensive and impractical for many applications.

We are on the cusp of unlocking the secrets behind what causes high-temperature superconductivity. In the past 3 years, CIFAR researchers have published a series of landmark papers that have taken us very close to putting this decades-old mystery to rest. And once the nature of this phenomenon is laid bare, we can then turn our full attention to finding ways to raise the upper temperature limit of superconductivity.

Consider some of the possible applications of room-temperature superconductors: Inexpensive, portable MRI scanners; fast, cheap magnetically levitating train systems; power grids that lose no electricity during transmission. Superconductors are already used for these types of applications, but their high cost makes widespread implementation unpractical. Not only would room-temperature superconductors revolutionize these known uses, but they would also open the door to countless new applications that couldn’t be contemplated with current technology.

Consider the laser once more: when it was invented in the 1950s, the laser was a “solution without a problem” – very interesting scientifically, but without immediately apparent practical application. Today, lasers are employed for everything from microchip production to eye surgery, and from scientific research to stadium light shows. Room-temperature superconductors would be even more revolutionary, reshaping consumer electronics, city infrastructure, and the world of research itself.

The Bottom Line

“Can we create superconductors that work at room temperature?” is the Next Big Question because we are getting close to answering it in ways that could make huge changes to both advanced research, and to everyday life.