Are we heading for a repeat of 1986-87's Superconductor-mania?
Wednesday, August 5, 2009 - 14:56
in Physics & Chemistry
In the August issue of Physics Today, there is an article entitled "Iron-based superconductors" by the magazine's senior editor, Charles Day. The magazine summarizes it this way: "For 22 years ceramic oxides of copper seemed to offer the only way to reach high-temperature superconductivity. Now, a new and unexpected route is being charted: through semimetal compounds of iron." It makes me wonder whether we are about to see a repeat of the mania of the late 1980s with the discovery of "high-temperature" superconductivity in a family of cuprate ceramics with a particular crystal structure that gave them the designation of perovskites.