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To: c.hinton who wrote (75781)	9/2/2001 6:05:45 AM
From: Square_Dealings	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116835

New high-temp superconductor uses carbon By Tim Dobbyn WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Scientists at Lucent Technologies Inc.'s <LU.N> Bell Labs have managed to make soccer ball-shaped carbon molecules act as a superconductors at relatively warm temperatures, raising hopes for faster and super-efficient computers. According to research reported on Thursday in the journal Science, a group led by Bell Labs physicist Hendrik Schon inserted molecules of chloroform and bromoform among the carbon spheres, known as bucky balls, to achieve superconductivity that works above the temperature of liquid nitrogen -- minus 384.4 Fahrenheit (minus 195.8 Celsius). The team also reported that they were able to manipulate the mixture's electrical properties, from an insulator through to superconductivity, using an electrical field, a property that bodes well for using the material in electronic circuits. All materials that can conduct electricity become superconductors at "absolute zero" -- minus 459 Fahrenheit (minus 273 Celsius) -- a discovery made in 1911. The challenge has been to find materials that will conduct electricity with zero resistance at temperatures warm enough to be cooled relatively easily, a feat previously achieved only with copper oxide-based ceramics. Bell Labs says bucky ball superconductors are potentially less expensive than the copper oxide superconductors, which have already found commercial applications in powerful magnets and wires for some power transmission applications. "This development shows that high-temperature superconductivity is not related only to one class of materials," Schon told Reuters. Art Ramirez, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, predicted in Science that other researchers would quickly try to duplicate and surpass Schon's efforts. "This is a footrace now," Ramirez was quoted as saying. The Bell Labs team's bucky balls acted as superconductors below minus 249 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 156 Celsius), compared with the previous Bell Labs temperature record of minus 366 Fahrenheit (minus 221 Celsius) set last year using the bucky balls, which are named after American architect and engineer Buckminster Fuller. The addition of chloroform and bromoform to crystals made of 60-atom bucky balls increases the distance between the spheres, lowering the electronic and molecular attraction between them and increasing the electric charge the material can harbor. Schon declined to speculate on whether room temperature superconductivity, the holy grail of this area of research, could be realized anytime soon. He said the aim was to push the temperature up further, perhaps by increasing the distance between bucky balls with other compounds. "But if you push them too far apart the attraction becomes too weak and the crystal breaks down," he said. There have also been calculations that smaller bucky balls with fewer atoms could raise superconductivity temperatures higher. "At this point I think that's speculation," said Schon, saying the smaller carbon spheres were harder to make and might react with the very compounds used to keep them apart. 18:51 08-30-01 More messages.yahoo.com