Associate professor Mazhar Ali and a team at TU Delft published their new research in the journal Nature, outlining how their work on superconducting diodes could vastly boost the field of computing.

Superconductors have the potential to make electronic devices hundreds of times faster at the same time as eliminating energy losses. However, magnetic fields have traditionally been required to prevent them from conducting in all directions, meaning they haven't been practical for classical computing.

The TU Delft team has provided an alternative method for controlling the current direction in a superconductor without magnets. They used a novel quantum material developed by a material physics team at Johns Hopkins University called Nb3Br8. Similar to Graphene, the material is atomically thin. Crucially, this specific material is theorized to have its own electric dipole.

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However, one obstacle the researchers need to overcome is the question of usability at room temperature. The tests so far have been run at extremely cold temperatures below 77 Kelvin (-196 °C, -321 °F). If the TU Delft team can figure out how to run the JJ superconductor at more normal temperatures  — something Ali says is possible with "known High Tc Superconductors" — then they will be much closer to the next step, which is to investigate whether it can be scaled for mass production...

Full article: https://interestingengineering.com/400-times-faster-superconductor