Question: What is a super conducter? How are they made? And are we any closer to making one which works at room temperature?

Iain Moal answered on 14 Mar 2014:

A superconductor is a material which conducts electricity without resistance. In order words, no energy is wasted when electricity flows through one. The ones that we know about only work at very low temperatures, but they could have all sorts of useful applications, such as making magnetic fields for medical research, or magnetic levitation based transport, as well as in the efficient generation and transmission of power.

In fact, making a superconductor was one of the lab experiments when I was studying chemistry at university. The one we made was composed of barium, copper and yttirium. You can make it by combining the three elements as oxides or nitrates. These are solids, and in order to make solids react you must crush them down into a very fine powder so that there is good contact between the surfaces of the particles. Then, the powder must be heated up to a very high temperature in a furnace. Then, it must be cooled down very slowly, so that the atoms get a chance to settle in the right places, and there you have it, a solid synthesis of a superconducting material.

As for whether we will have any room temperature superconductors soon, I am not sure. It isn’t an area of science that I follow, but I know that there is a lot of research dedicated to trying to find one, so it wouldn’t surprise me if someone makes a breakthrough in the not-so-distant future.