Superconductivity at room temperature??

[sol invictus]

The definition of a superconductor is that an equilibrium current I is flowing through the material without any voltage V driving the current: And no voltage no electric-field! Can you give a better definition for superconduction?

I have already learned in primary school that when a current I flows through a conductor under the action of a voltage V you generate energy IV that dissipates as heat! Have you not learned this?

You asserted (I think, you weren't very clear) that your device sustains a current indefinitely (no dissipation) with zero E field, and therefore is a superconductor. When I asked you how you know there is zero E field and no dissipation, your response was that superconductors have those properties, and since your device is a superconductor it obviously does too.

If you can't see the problem with the "logic" of your responses, then we have already identified the source of your frustration over all those years.

 

[johanfprins]

If you are right, I at least hope you are generalizing wildly. It is not entirely impossible that a small (relatively speaking) research field like superconductivity may have some problems. But I can assure you that physics is not dead yet.

Thinking about you words I do not think I am generalizing. Censorship by the crackpots in charge of science has become the rule. Remember Climategate? This I can assure you is NOT an exception.

I can tell you that Carver Mead is correct when he stated in 2001 that the last seven decades of the twentieth century will become known as the dark ages of physics. Another decade has since been added to these dark ages.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I have already learned in primary school that when a current I flows through a conductor under the action of a voltage V you generate energy IV that dissipates as heat! Have you not learned this?

Let's hope not; what you wrote is wrong in at least three ways. Most importantly, the power (not energy) IV can be transformed into radiation or (over time) do work that is not dissipated as heat.

In most practical applications apart from electrical heating, that radiation or work is the reason for generating the current.

 

[johanfprins]

You asserted (I think, you weren't very clear) that your device sustains a current indefinitely (no dissipation) with zero E field, and therefore is a superconductor.

This is obviously correct except that I do not think that I used the word "indefinitely" . When a current flows through a material without an electric field driving it through the material, the material must be superconductor

When I asked you how you know there is zero E field and no dissipation, your response was that superconductors have those properties, and since your device is a superconductor it obviously does too.

Can you please quote this verbatim. I have claimed that the polarization field cancels the applied field and therefore there is no electric-field. And even though there is not an electric field that can drive the charge carriers, a current keeps on flowing: Therefore the material MUST be a superconductor. This has been the definition of superconduction since 1911. Except if you have another definition?

If you can't see the problem with the "logic" of your responses, then we have already identified the source of your frustration over all those years.

Please find what you are claiming is illogical in my arguments and quote it verbatim. I think the fault lies with you. I will be back tomorrow to read your verbatim response.

 

[johanfprins]

Let's hope not; what you wrote is wrong in at least three ways. Most importantly, the power (not energy) IV can be transformed into radiation or (over time) do work that is not dissipated as heat.

So you say that it can do work without dissipating energy! have you EVER heard of the second law of thermodynamics? Radiation is also dissipation of this energy and using it as work is also dissipating this energy

In most practical applications apart from electrical heating, that radiation or work is the reason for generating the current.

So? The current flow generates energy which can be used in different ways. The current flowing through a superconductor does NOT generate such energy. You are playing semantics here.
See you all again tomorrow!

 

[sol invictus]

This is obviously correct except that I do not think that I used the word "indefinitely" . When a current flows through a material without an electric field driving it through the material, the material must be superconductor

At the same time, the current flow must continue indefinitely - because if there is no resistance, there is no way for the current to dissipate.

Can you please quote this verbatim. I have claimed that the polarization field cancels the applied field and therefore there is no electric-field.

And I asked you how you know the total field is zero, and your reply was (verbatim, with an irrelevant phrase omitted for brevity) "Since...the measured voltage over any two contacts to superconductor must be exactly zero."

So here's your "logic". Given A=B:

You: I claim my device is A, therefore it is B.
Me: But how do you know it is A?
You: All Bs are As, therefore it is A.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Let's hope not; what you wrote is wrong in at least three ways. Most importantly, the power (not energy) IV can be transformed into radiation or (over time) do work that is not dissipated as heat.

So you say that it can do work without dissipating energy!

As can be seen from the quotation above, I did not say that.

have you EVER heard of the second law of thermodynamics?

Yes.

Radiation is also dissipation of this energy and using it as work is also dissipating this energy

You can indeed look at it that way, but neither radiation nor work constitute dissipation "as heat", which was your claim.

In most practical applications apart from electrical heating, that radiation or work is the reason for generating the current.

So? The current flow generates energy which can be used in different ways. The current flowing through a superconductor does NOT generate such energy. You are playing semantics here.

I just continued the game of semantics you started in post #59 when you dodged sol invictus's entirely relevant question by telling us about your primary school education:

I have already learned in primary school that when a current I flows through a conductor under the action of a voltage V you generate energy IV that dissipates as heat! Have you not learned this?

Snark does not impress when you don't get the physics right. When corrected, you misrepresented both my statements and your own, adding still more snark.

See you all again tomorrow!

I've seen enough. Bye.

 

[Modified]

If you are right, I at least hope you are generalizing wildly. It is not entirely impossible that a small (relatively speaking) research field like superconductivity may have some problems.

I've had trouble publishing in a very small field of materials science (I'm a software engineer who used to work with a materials engineer/scientist). There were only two other groups working in the same area at that time, so journal editors would tell us they couldn't find reviewers or the reviewers would be our competition, who would just sit on the papers. Still, everything got published eventually, even if it took years.

 

[Cuddles]

BTW I did succeed to get two manuscripts on ArXive a few years ago which you can look at. I was just lucky to slip them in by pleading that I know no expert I can approach to vouch for them since I am isolated here in South Africa. Just remember that my knowledge and insight have improved vastly since those manuscripts had been written.

You do realise that absolutely anyone can publish on arXiv, right? There are all kinds of crackpot papers published there, by people ranging from tenured professors to nuts working out of their parents' basement. You don't need to "slip them in", you just post them.

If anyone's interested, the two papers are here:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0607/0607227.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0607/0607209.pdf
The second one is not about superconductivity, but presents some rather... interesting... claims about quantum physics and relativity.

There also appears some slight inconsistencies here. Since arriving here, Prins has claimed that physics has been nonsense and all physicists stupid for the last 110 years, and that he was "excommunicated" for questioning their dogmatically held beliefs. However, according to his own website, he is in fact a physicist (although the University of Pretoria say he got his BSc in physics in 1962, not 1961), has been working as a material scientist, lecturer and professor for much of his time since then, and is currently an honorary professor at the University of Pretoria.

So, not in fact excommunicated or an ostracised pariah. A retired professor who still holds an honorary title, but who is trying to push crackpot ideas on a field outside his expertise that have apparently been ignored or dismissed by people who actually are experts in the field. Sadly, it seems to be yet another case of someone who does perfectly good work throughout their life, but loses it at the end and decides that the whole world is against them because their pet nutty theory isn't accepted.

 

[ben m]

Let me be blunt, Johan.

I think that your device did NOT show zero electric field. Because it did not show zero electric field, your device is NOT a superconductor.

Did you do an experiment which would convince me that your device indeed showed zero electric field?

(Don't just tell me "that's what superconductors do"---remember that I do not think that your device is a superconductor. I think it's an ordinary conductor across which you mismeasured the voltage drop.)

 

[davefoc]

In addition to the paper Cuddles linked to an article by Prius was publish in February of 2003 in the Semiconductor Science and Technology journal.

The diamond–vacuum interface: II. Electron extraction from n-type diamond:
evidence for superconduction at room temperature.

The paper is available here:
http://iopscience.iop.org/0268-1242/18/3/319
I think it might require a fee or or licensing to access though

I tried to understand the paper and determine the nature of the claim. I didn't succeed, partially because some of the details are technically difficult for me and because I didn't spend enough time, but I do have a few thoughts:

1. Mr. Prius is not claiming the discovery of a room temperature super conducting material. He is instead claiming the discovery of an effect which he believes is the result of superconductivity.

2. The effect is a current flow in a vacuum between a gold plated probe and an oxygen doped diamond. A voltage was applied between the diamond and the probe and a current was observed. The probe and the diamond were separated and at distances up to about 17 um the current continued to flow. When the distance was increased above the cutoff point the current dropped to zero. The current would continue to flow even when the applied voltage was reduced below the level necessary to start conduction and it would flow even when the voltage was reversed.

3. From my (not very knowledgeable) perspective the phenomena seemed very similar to conduction through a plasma except in this case it seems like plasma conduction has been ruled out because the experiment was done in a vacuum and the diamond and the probe were microscopically examined for any signs of pitting caused by plasma and none was found.

4. There are, I think two issues here, suggested by the results of Mr. Prius' experiments:
A. Are the results novel? Is the effect well known or at least has it been described before?
B. Is Mr. Prius correct that the best explanation is that this is an example of room temperature superconduction? Are there other explanations, such as tunnelling, that might be applicable?

I don't know the answer to either question. I tried to understand why Prius believes that room temperature superconduction has occurred. This is his explanation from the abstract to his paper:

... It is found that the extracted electrons within the gap between the diamond surface and the anode are able to form a stable, highly conducting phase. Band theory, combined with the equations that describe electron transport in a vacuum diode, unequivocally show that the distances between these electrons, as well as their speeds, must keep on decreasing as long as there is an electric field between the diamond surface and the anode. This implies that steady-state current flow, as experimentally observed, can only occur if this field becomes zero while still allowing a current to flow from the diamond to the anode. The only way to achieve such a situation is for the extracted electrons within the gap to form a superconducting phase.

Because electrons are fermions, an unabated decrease in their nearest-neighbor distances as well as their speeds should eventually force them to violate the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship. At this limit, they become restricted, as pairs, within volumes or ‘orbitals’ which in turn fill the whole space between the diamond and the anode. Because these ‘orbitals’ have zero spin, they are boson-like charge carriers, and because they are as near to each other as is physically possible, they automatically constitute a Bose–Einstein condensate; i.e. they constitute a superconducting phase.

I hope that Sol Invictus or one of the other posters in this thread that are more knowledgeable about physics than I am can understand better what is being said in the abstract with regard to a conclusion that superconduction is occurring.

 

[ben m]

I hope that Sol Invictus or one of the other posters in this thread that are more knowledgeable about physics than I am can understand better what is being said in the abstract with regard to a conclusion that superconduction is occurring.

That's a good reading of the paper.

You're right that what they're seeing looks (in part) like plasma. Conduction turns on at a high "strike" voltage but remains on when the voltage is lowered. However, it looks unlike plasma in that the authors report that the conduction path is on permanently---they say they can leave the voltage off for a week and the conduction is still there. If they're right, then yes this is not a plasma.

Quite frankly, it sounds more like a short. Some bit of dust got on their sample, or two wires brushed against each other, or something. They dismiss this (boring) possibility a little too quickly in the paper. On the other hand, they claim to have repeated the measurement on several samples.

However, there was no attempt whatsoever to measure the voltage drop across the gap. Most of the experimental data is taken with kilovolts on the apparatus and milliamps flowing through it. Um, what? They're looking at circuit with a total of a megaohm resistance in it---how do you claim that one 10um gap must contribute exactly zero resistance? How do you know it's not, say, 20 ohms? Not from the data in the paper.

In summary, this paper shows an indeed-surprising, and possibly interesting, behavior of the "tunneling gap" between a diamond and a metal probe. It's the sort of measurement that would prompt *me* to look for a stupid flaw in my equipment setup. It is not the sort of measurement that would prompt me to label the gap a "superconductor" and to make a bunch of bizarre theoretical leaps to explain it.

 

[dasmiller]

Quite frankly, it sounds more like a short. Some bit of dust got on their sample, or two wires brushed against each other, or something. They dismiss this (boring) possibility a little too quickly in the paper. On the other hand, they claim to have repeated the measurement on several samples.

Perhaps whisker growth? Depending on the setup, that sort of thing might happen repeatably.

(I haven't looked at the experimental setup, and in any event I know very little about whisker growth, just throwing it out as a possibility)

 

[davefoc]

That's a good reading of the paper.

You're right that what they're seeing looks (in part) like plasma. Conduction turns on at a high "strike" voltage but remains on when the voltage is lowered. However, it looks unlike plasma in that the authors report that the conduction path is on permanently---they say they can leave the voltage off for a week and the conduction is still there. If they're right, then yes this is not a plasma.

Quite frankly, it sounds more like a short. Some bit of dust got on their sample, or two wires brushed against each other, or something. They dismiss this (boring) possibility a little too quickly in the paper. On the other hand, they claim to have repeated the measurement on several samples.

However, there was no attempt whatsoever to measure the voltage drop across the gap. Most of the experimental data is taken with kilovolts on the apparatus and milliamps flowing through it. Um, what? They're looking at circuit with a total of a megaohm resistance in it---how do you claim that one 10um gap must contribute exactly zero resistance? How do you know it's not, say, 20 ohms? Not from the data in the paper.

In summary, this paper shows an indeed-surprising, and possibly interesting, behavior of the "tunneling gap" between a diamond and a metal probe. It's the sort of measurement that would prompt *me* to look for a stupid flaw in my equipment setup. It is not the sort of measurement that would prompt me to label the gap a "superconductor" and to make a bunch of bizarre theoretical leaps to explain it.

I think one of your points is that there is a third issue suggested by Prius' paper. Was there some form of experimental error involved? In Prius' defense it seemed to me that he was concerned about that possibility and took steps to reduce the possibility. Just based on that I gave his claim some credibility. He might be wrong, but the paper struck me as being written by someone who had the kind of introspection that I like to see before I spend much time trying to figure out what somebody is talking about.

As to your second point, why does the existence of the effect indicate superconduction:
Yeah, that's an issue and I take it you didn't find the explanation from the abstract a good one?

I wondered a bit about the idea that this was in some way a tunneling effect. According to Wikipedia the gap in a tunnel diode is 10nm so in terms of distance this effect seems to be much different than that which goes on inside a tunnel diode. A tunnel diode also exhibits negative resistance in part of its current voltage curve.

As to measuring the voltage drop across the gap:
How could it be done? I assume the voltage across the gap is pretty small even if exists and it might be difficult to measure without affecting the experiment. One thought would be to short across the gap somehow. If the current goes up the resistance across the gap was not zero. But I see problems with this idea. The shorting mechanism might provide conduction paths between the diamond and the probe that aren't active when the superconduction is underway so that current might go up as a result of the shorting technique but that might not eliminate the possibility that superconduction was going on in a localized area of the probe.

On the idea that the voltage can be removed completely and the current can be reestablished by applying a voltage that was too low to get conduction going in the first place:
That is interesting. So how do you suppose you get the setup out of this mode? It seems like the claim is that once the effect has been established something is changed in the experimental setup such that current can be initiated at very low voltages. But what has changed? It is hard to imagine what that might be. ETA: (Except of course for some kind of experimental error, like dust or dendrites).

 

[ben m]

Perhaps whisker growth? Depending on the setup, that sort of thing might happen repeatably.

(I haven't looked at the experimental setup, and in any event I know very little about whisker growth, just throwing it out as a possibility)

They mention and reject "carbon nanotubes". However, they're supposedly moving the probe and substrate apart, which you'd think would break whiskers. Also: a milliamp is a lot for a single whisker.

My guess: the probe and substrate are touching the whole time. Their z-axis translation stage is miscalibrated, or broke midway through the experiment. They thought they were backing the probe from "just touching" to "100um away", but in fact they were backing it from "pressing really hard" to "just touching". Just a guess, but it's perfectly consistent with the data.

 

[mike3]

So I would have thought myself. It should be so in a "normal" functioning physics society; but those days are long past.
It fits all published data on all superconductors EVER discovered as well as the data that have been published and cannot be explained: Let me give you a few recent examples that fall within the latter category:

Great. Now can you go and produce the explanation? Give the rigorous treatment of your model, then go and show the logic as to how it fits all the data points you cite for it.

 

[mike3]

If I have to be called a crackpot because I am talking the truth: So be it. After 10 years of insults thrown at me the th real crackpots I do not care anymore what they call me. All I am interested in is to save physics from the claws of the real crackpots who are nowadays in control of this field.

If you really think you're that right, and everyone else is wrong, then provide the proof. Go and spill ALL the beans. Hold NOTHING back... otherwise I conclude that what you're claiming is either false, or you do not really have much enthusiasm for "saving" physics, or both.

 

[Ziggurat]

It fits all published data on all superconductors EVER discovered as well as the data that have been published and cannot be explained

I call ************.

I'm sorry, but even if your theory is right, this claim is absolutely absurd on its face. There's simply too much data out there for anyone to have fit it all, regardless of the accuracy of the theory. And it's a virtual certainty that some of the data is wrong, so if the theory is correct, it shouldn't agree with everything.

 

[davefoc]

One thing that argues against the physically touching explanation is that the effect can be initiated just by increasing the voltage above the turn on level.

From the paper:

By first setting the gap, and then increasing the
positive potential, the current established itself over the gap
when the potential reached a suitable value. For a gap width
of 10 μm the required potential was ≈420 V.

It is interesting though, how well the just barely touching theory fits the available data except for this result. Is it possible that the large potential difference between the probe and the diamond is enough to cause enough physical movement such that the just barely touching theory is correct?

 

[johanfprins]

I asked you how you know the total field is zero, and your reply was (verbatim, with an irrelevant phrase omitted for brevity) "Since...the measured voltage over any two contacts to superconductor must be exactly zero."
So here's your "logic". Given A=B:
You: I claim my device is A, therefore it is B.
Me: But how do you know it is A?
You: All Bs are As, therefore it is A.

I looked afresh at this conclusion this morning and wondered how it could have happened that you extracted this reasoning from my comments while it has not been my intention. It can only mean one thing: That we have for some reason misunderstood each other. I thus decided to revisit all your postings and my answers to see how this could have happened. I should have done it yesterday already but I have had a rough day: This is, however not an excuse for not having done so.

I think I found the mistake and it is I who have misunderstood your very first question and responded incorrectly and unfortunately with sarcasm . I apologize and can only plead in mitigation that after 10 grueling years I have become damaged goods that sometimes react like one of Pavlov's preconditioned dogs.

The mistake already slipped in with your very first posting #53 where you asked: "Why can there not be an electric field?" I assumed that you asked why can one not have superconduction with an electric field being present. The reason why I concluded this, is that I have in the past had many arguments with so-called experts who claim that during superconduction there is an electric-field along the surface, even though you cannot measure it; and I assumed that we are back to this physically impossible argument.

I will now assume that you fully agree that when a current flows through a material without an electric field being present the material must be a superconductor; and that what you meant was how do I really know that for my experiment there was no electric field between the diamond and the anode. Obviously a current can flow through a dipole layer while there is still an electric field within the dipole. This happens for a pn-junction and this causes diode behavior. A very valid question which I see that I did not adequately address when I explained my experiment on this thread.

The explanation is that my diamond-vacuum interface can be described as "an ohmic contact to the vacuum". To understand this, I will use examples from solid state electronics. Consider again a pn-junction but with a very high density of donors and acceptors on opposite sides of the junction. It is known that one then does not obtain diode behavior but so-called "punch-through". There are now so many donors and electrons that even when you apply an electric-field, the dipole adjusts to cancel this field within it. Charge carriers can then freely move through the dipole as if it is not even there.

The same situation can be generated when making an interface contact between an n-type semiconductor and a metal which has a lower Fermi-level. If the density of the donors near the interface is not very high, one obtains a Schottky barrier diode and when applying an electric-field there is a non-zero field within the dipole layer while the charges flow through: However, when the density of donors are very high near the interface, one obtains an ohmic contact. In this case the dipole again cancels the applied electric completely within itself while a current flows through it. So the dipole is already in this case in effect a thin superconductor; even though one can measure a contact resistance. The latter resistance is however not caused by an electric field within the dipole. To go deeper into this will require too much space on a thread.

Now, when the Japanese grew phosphorus-doped diamond, they tried to extract electrons from these diamond by an anode but failed. They could only extract electrons once dielectric breakdown occurred. I realized that this failure could be caused by the fact that in these diamonds the density of donors near the surface is too low, and theorized that if I could increase this density by a bout 1000 times I might create an "ohmic contact" to the vacuum. My experiments indicated that I would be able to do this with oxygen ion implantation. I tried it and it worked just as predicted theoretically.

By increasing the applied field over a gap between the diamond surface and the anode, a critical voltage was reached, long before dielectric breakdown occurred, at which I could extract electrons right into the anode and a current started to flow. The only problem was that when reaching this threshold the current jumped around erratically, but after moving through this threshold an equilibrium current flowed around the circuit. The only problem was that once equilibrium has been established, one could not get the device to switch off at the critical voltage at which it switched on. one could take the voltage to zero and increase it negatively so that a current can now flow in the opposite direction.

When moving the anode far away this behavior stopped and then one had to start all over again to establish the condition at a voltage which was exactly reproducible for the same gap size. When making the gap size very large one could not reach this condition since there were then not enough electrons just below the diamond's surface to establish an ohmic contact. By increasing the applied voltage in this case, the dipole reaches a situation for which it cannot cancel the applied electric field anymore and electron extraction can only be generated by dielectric breakdown. Thus the stable phase only formed under conditions which allowed the dipole to totally cancel the applied electric field. One can write down the equations which are used every day to design interfaces for electronic chips and these equations confirm that an equilibrium situation, which allows an equilibrium current to flow, can only be reached when the dipole layer cancels the applied electric field. It is for this reason that I can conclude with confidence that my experiment is direct scientific proof that there is not an electric-field; since if there were one, there would be no current flowing. I hope this is now better better explained.

I apologize again for this unfortunate misunderstanding and my unacceptable reaction to it.