Iron-based superconductors have been a hot topic ever since their discovery 4 years ago. This is because of the many practical advantages iron-based superconductors hold over, for example, copper based superconductors which are brittle and difficult to work with. Earlier this year, a team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland found an iron based superconductor that operated at the highest temperature in its class (47 Kelvin). Although still extremely cold, its critical temperature, or the point it takes a material to reach its superconductivity, was relatively high compared to others in its 1:2:2 class.
This class consisted of its crystals surrounded by a group of a calcium atom, two iron atoms, and two arsenic atoms. This diversity of atoms that make up the unit cell hold promise to the superconductor's ability to serve functions, for these common atoms could be substituted with different atoms to suit different situations. The superconductor that the team from the University of Maryland and the NIST discovered held a strange atomic property. When a calcium atom was replaced by a smaller atom, it unit cell structure was shrunk by 10%. Avoiding this size change, which is considerably large in the atomic level, would be key to this iron based superconductor's utility in electronics and other practical implications. The picture on the left shows this "shrinking" characteristic of the iron based superconductor; when the calcium on the far, front, right corner of the unit cell was replaced with praseodymium, the structure itself shrunk. In order to re-stabilize the structure, much more praseodymium was needed in the unit cell.
This class consisted of its crystals surrounded by a group of a calcium atom, two iron atoms, and two arsenic atoms. This diversity of atoms that make up the unit cell hold promise to the superconductor's ability to serve functions, for these common atoms could be substituted with different atoms to suit different situations. The superconductor that the team from the University of Maryland and the NIST discovered held a strange atomic property. When a calcium atom was replaced by a smaller atom, it unit cell structure was shrunk by 10%. Avoiding this size change, which is considerably large in the atomic level, would be key to this iron based superconductor's utility in electronics and other practical implications. The picture on the left shows this "shrinking" characteristic of the iron based superconductor; when the calcium on the far, front, right corner of the unit cell was replaced with praseodymium, the structure itself shrunk. In order to re-stabilize the structure, much more praseodymium was needed in the unit cell.
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