Ultraconductors are patented1 polymers that are being developed for commercial applications by Room Temperature Superconductors Inc (ROOTS). The materials exhibit a characteristic set of properties including conductivity and current carrying capacity equivalent to superconductors, but without the need for cryogenic support.
The Ultraconductor properties appear in thin films (5-100 microns) of certain dielectric polymers after an induced, non-reversible transition at field zero and at ambient temperatures >> 300 K. This transition resembles a formal transition from insulation to conductor ( IC).
The base polymers used are determined viscous polar elastomers, obtained by polymerization in the laboratory or purchased from industrial suppliers. To date, seven chemically distinct polymers have been demonstrated.
The transition is induced by gentle ionization of the films by various methods. It occurs in connection with relatively slow electronic phase separation (hours to days, depending on the volume) of the materials. The separation produces two components, a) a nearly perfect dielectric volume phase and b) a highly localized phase having an average charge concentration of about 1020 cm -3 or more. The rich loading phase of the polymer is highly organized and durable, and exhibits a characteristic set of anomalous properties.
After ionization, the film initially exhibits increased ferromagnetism (more correctly, superparamagnetism, measured by the magnetic susceptibility meter), which rises to values corresponding to a polarized spin charge average concentration (for the entire volume of the polymer) As high as ~ 1018 to 1019 Cm-3. This characteristic is considered to indicate collective quantum mechanical behavior.
Subsequently, discrete microscopic structures - the localized phase - can be observed and visualized (eg, by AFM and EFM) as randomly distributed in the bulk material. A proportion of these structures, typically 1-2 micrometers in diameter, extends from the substrate to the surface of the film, and can also be electrically contacted. These structures exhibit a characteristic set of measured properties, including highly anisotropic conductivity> 1011 S / cm; Current densities> 5 x 108 A / cm2; A coefficient Seebeck zero in the temperature range 87 - 233K; A violation of six orders of magnitude of the law Wiedemann Franz; And an almost instant transition to high resistivity at a critical current. The conductivity of the polymers does not depend on temperature measurably in the range of 1.8 - 700 K, and is stable in magnetic fields at least as high as 9 Tesla.
IR spectroscopy of the post-transition films shows that they do not have chemical changes from the base polymer; That is, the new structures are composed of the same molecular material as the mass, which remains insulating.
