24-12-2010, 02:44 PM
[attachment=7634]
Prepared By:Arsalaan Sahil Dar
Superconductor:-
Superconductivity, which is defined as the absence of resistance in a conducting material to a continuously flowing electric current, is a special property that a sizable number of substances attain suddenly at very low temperatures. The substances (called superconductors) include elements, alloys , compounds, and nonstoichiometric ceramic materials. Superconductors also exhibit perfect diamagnetism; that is, magnetic fields cannot penetrate them (the Meissner effect), and small powerful magnets actually float (levitate) above flat superconductor surfaces. A superconductor's critical transition temperature, T C , is the temperature above which no super-conductivity can be obtained. For elements, alloys, and simple compounds, very low critical transition temperatures ( T C 23 K) mean that the cooling effects of liquid helium ( B.P. = 4 K) are needed to bring about and to maintain their superconductivity. The discovery in 1986 that nonstoichiometric ceramics containing copper and oxygen can have much higher T C values has provided a new impetus for developing superconducting materials.
High Temperature Superconductors:-
In April 1986, K. Alex Müller and J. Georg Bednorz (with IBM in Switzerland) reported the superconductivity of a nonstoichiometric ceramic oxide of lanthanum, barium, and copper, La 2− x Ba x CuO 4− y , with the then record high T C of 35 K. Further experiments conducted by Müller, Bednorz, and others showed that slight modifications made to La 2− x Ba x − CuO 4− y ( x 0.2 and y is even smaller) could yield materials having T C s of 50 K. By early 1987, Paul C. W. Chu (at the University of Houston), Maw-Kuen Wu (at the University of Alabama), and their coworkers synthesized another ceramic oxide material, YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7− y , and observed that super-conductivity in the material was attainable by cooling it with liquid nitrogen ( B.P. = 77 K). This "high temperature superconductor" made possible.
A magnet is hovering over a superconductor, demonstrating that magnetic fields cannot penetrate the superconductor, known as the Meissner effect.
superconductor applications that were impractical with the low temperature superconductors.
Other nonstoichiometric ceramic oxides that contain copper in nonintegral oxidation states have been synthesized and evaluated. Several of these materials have even higher T C 's than that of YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7− y . The BSCCO series Bi 2 Sr 2 Ca n − 1Cu n O 2 n +4+ y (for n = 1 to 4) reaches a T C maximum of 110 K for Bi 2 Sr 2 Ca 2 Cu 3O 10+ y ; a similar Tl 2 Ba 2 Ca n −1Cu n O 2 n +4+ y series reaches a maximum of 122 K for Tl 2 Ba 2 Ca 2 Cu 3 O 10+ y ; HgBa 2 Ca 2 Cu 3 O 8+ y has a T C of 135 K at ambient pressure; and Hg 0.8 Tl 0.2 Ba 2 Ca 2 Cu 3 O 8.33 has a T C of 138 K. Also, the T C of HgBa 2 Ca 2 Cu 3 O 8+ y has been reported to increase to 153 K at a pressure of 150,000 atmospheres and to 160 K at 280,000 atmospheres. Even higher T C values have been claimed for portions of multiparticle ceramics, but no macroscopic material has shown unambiguous superconductivity at these higher temperatures (above 160 K).
Other new classes of superconductors that are being investigated include intermediate temperature range superconductors, such as magnesium diboride ( T C = 39 K), alkali-doped C 60 (M 3 C 60 has a T C of 33 K), and hole-doped C 60 ( T C = 52 K). The latter result led Jan Hendrik Schon, Christian Kloc, and Bertram Batlogg (of Bell Labs) to the newer haloform-intercalated, high temperature C 60 superconductors C 60 • 2CHCl 3 and C 60 • 2CHBr 3 , with T C values of 80 K and 117 K, respectively.
The theoretical interpretation of the high temperature superconductors is still under development. The copper oxide ceramic superconductors obtain their paired conducting electrons from copper in mixed oxidation states of I and II or II and III, depending on the particular system. The paired conducting electrons are called Cooper pairs, after Leon N. Cooper. Cooper's name also gives us the C of BCS; the BCS theory is an interpretation of superconductivity for low temperature superconductors (having T C 's of less than 40 K).
MEISSNER EFFECT
The Meissner effect is the repulsion of a magnetic field from the interior of a super-conductor below its critical temperature. Whereas a weak magnetic field is totally excluded from the interior of a superconductor, a very strong magnetic field will penetrate the material and concurrently lower the critical transition temperature of the superconductor. W. Meissner and R. Ochsenfeld discovered the Meissner effect in 1933.
