August 27, 2009

A new study shows that a “fingerprint” of high-temperature superconductivity remains intact above the super chilly temperatures at which these materials carry current with no resistance, offering hope for energy-saving applications under real-world conditions.

August 25, 2009

With stimulus funds in hand, a collaboration of national laboratories, universities, and industry is testing a new material that could revolutionize the superconducting magnet field.

August 02, 2009

Brookhaven Lab scientists have grown large enough crystals of one well-studied high-temperature (high-Tc) superconductor to directly measure its magnetic properties. These measurements cast considerable doubt on assumptions commonly made in trying to understand the role magnetism plays in these materials’ ability to carry current with no resistance.

July 14, 2009

J.C. Seamus Davis and John Tranquada, physicists at Brookhaven Lab, along with Aharon Kapitulnik of Stanford University, have been named the recipients of the 2009 Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Prize for outstanding superconductivity experiments.

June 30, 2009

Research reveales surprising information about how electron behavior influences the conduction of electricity in a class of high-temperature superconductors. An increased understanding of this mechanism could one day transform a number of technologies, including the transmission of electrical power.

April 29, 2009

Brookhaven National Laboratory will be home to one of 46 new multi-million-dollar Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) announced on Monday by the White House in conjunction with a speech delivered by President Barack Obama at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.

December 01, 2008

Scientists studying a material that appeared to lose its ability to carry current with no resistance say new measurements reveal that the material is indeed a superconductor — but only in two dimensions. Equally surprising, this new form of 2-D superconductivity emerges at a higher temperature than ordinary 3-D superconductivity in other compositions of the same material.

November 05, 2008

Like astronomers tweaking images to gain a more detailed glimpse of distant stars, Brookhaven physicists have found ways to sharpen images of the energy spectra in high-temperature superconductors — materials that carry electrical current effortlessly when cooled below a certain temperature. These new imaging methods confirm that the electron pairs needed to carry current emerge above the transition temperature, before superconductivity sets in, but only in a particular direction.

October 08, 2008

One major goal on the path toward making useful superconducting devices has been engineering materials that act as superconductors at the nanoscale. Such nanoscale superconductors would be useful in devices such as superconductive transistors and eventually in ultrafast, power-saving electronics. In the October 9, 2008, issue of Nature, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory report that they have successfully produced two-layer thin films where neither layer is superconducting on its own,

September 15, 2008

Masaki Suenaga, a retired metallurgist who remains an active researcher at Brookhaven Lab, has received the IEEE Council on Superconductivity Award for significant and sustained contributions to applied superconductivity.

August 27, 2008

Scientists at Brookhaven Lab, in collaboration with colleagues at Cornell University, Tokyo University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Colorado, have uncovered the first experimental evidence for why the transition temperature of high-temperature superconductors — the temperature at which these materials carry electrical current with no resistance — cannot simply be elevated by increasing the electrons’ binding energy.

April 10, 2008

New research indicates that the secret to superconductivity, a phenomenon which has the potential to revolutionize the distribution of electrical power, may rest on the ability of electrons to take advantage of their natural repulsion in a complex situation.

March 07, 2007

Although it was discovered more than 20 years ago, a particular type of high-temperature (Tc) superconductor -- material that conducts electricity with almost zero resistance -- is regaining the attention of scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

November 16, 2006

Research published online in the journal Science this week by Tonica Valla, a physicist at Brookhaven, appears to resolve one mystery in the 20-year study of high-temperature (high Tc) superconductors -- materials that lose their resistance to the flow of electricity at relatively high temperatures. The research shows that a "pseudogap" in the energy level of the material's electronic spectrum is the result of the electrons being bound into pairs above the so-called transition temperature to the

April 26, 2006

An international collaboration including two physicists from Brookhaven National Laboratory has published additional evidence to support the existence of "stripes" in high-temperature (Tc) superconductors. The report in the April 27, 2006, issue of Nature strengthens earlier claims that such stripes, a particular spatial arrangement of electrical charges, might somehow contribute to the mechanism by which these materials carry current with no resistance.

March 16, 2006

In the twenty years since the discovery of high-temperature (Tc) superconductors, scientists have been trying to understand the mechanism by which electrons pair up and move coherently to carry electrical current with no resistance. "We are still at the beginning," says Tonica Valla, a physicist at Brookhaven, who will give a talk on his group's latest results at the American Physical Society meeting in Baltimore, Maryland on Thursday, March 16, 2006.

September 14, 2005

Researchers at Brookhaven have discovered a way to significantly increase the amount of electric current carried by a high-temperature superconductor, a material that conducts electricity with no resistance. This is an important step in the drive to create superconductor-based electric and power-delivery devices, such as power transmission lines, motors, and generators.

October 27, 2004

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered another possible clue to the causes of high-temperature superconductivity, a phenomenon in which the electrical resistance of a material disappears below a certain temperature.

July 30, 2004

A research group led by a scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory has discovered a simple relationship that mathematically links the properties of a class of high-temperature superconductors, materials that, below a certain temperature, conduct electricity with no resistance.

June 07, 2004

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have found evidence to prove why adding a small amount of calcium to a common high-temperature superconductor significantly increases the amount of electric current the material can carry.

June 02, 2004

Scientists at Brookhaven, in collaboration with researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom and Tohoku University in Japan, have discovered evidence supporting a possible mechanism for high-temperature superconductivity that had previously appeared incompatible with certain experimental observations.

March 23, 2004

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered an interesting type of electronic behavior in a recently discovered class of superconductors known as cobalt oxides, or cobaltates. These materials operate quite differently from other oxide superconductors, namely the copper oxides (or cuprates), which are commonly referred to as high-temperature superconductors.

February 23, 2004

Using crystal samples prepared at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, scientists from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, have ruled out two proposed theories for the subatomic mechanisms of superconductivity, a phenomenon in which the electrical resistance of certain materials drops to zero.