Superconductor means low resistance. Low resistance means less loss due to heat on a wire. Room temperature superconductor also means more efficient magnets for motors, coils, ending up in cars, MRI machines, etc.
It'll be hard to make traditional motor windings out of this particular material because AFAIK it's a ceramic, but perhaps with thin films on flex PCBs it would be possible.
I'm imagining a future where a superconducting layer on a PCB is just another checkbox you can choose when ordering small runs of boards.
[ ] 1 oz copper
[ ] 2 oz copper (+$2)
[X] 10 micron LK-99 (+$10)
Another thought - I think the first place we'll see this widely rolled out is in IC's (waiting for the Asianometry video on it). IC's are already planar, they're small so exotic materials aren't a big contributor to costs, and they're very power dense. Replacing a metal layer with a superconducting one could enable greater gate density and potentially significant improvements in efficiency. I don't know by how much because switching losses are probably where most energy is dissipated, but it's an incremental change that seems compatible with the process.
The theoretical papers I've seen (linked here in recent days) suggest that pure crystals of LK-99 would superconduct only in one dimension so it's likely to be fussier than that.
Perhaps it will be like a "tape" laid down with the proper orientation for each conductor. Perhaps you'll need separate north-south and east-west and maybe diagonal layers with special attention to inter-layer connections.
Well, you still lose current over time... for example, we had to dump a bucket of electrons into our superconducting, supercooled magnet about every month ago to keep things swirling properly.
And the issue being that it takes a lot of energy to super cool those superconductors, and thus they can only be used in highly specialized applications. A room temperature superconductor would be like any other conductor, just much, much better.
Thanks to everyone. I understand this much better.
_Adam|2 years ago
I'm imagining a future where a superconducting layer on a PCB is just another checkbox you can choose when ordering small runs of boards.
[ ] 1 oz copper
[ ] 2 oz copper (+$2)
[X] 10 micron LK-99 (+$10)
Another thought - I think the first place we'll see this widely rolled out is in IC's (waiting for the Asianometry video on it). IC's are already planar, they're small so exotic materials aren't a big contributor to costs, and they're very power dense. Replacing a metal layer with a superconducting one could enable greater gate density and potentially significant improvements in efficiency. I don't know by how much because switching losses are probably where most energy is dissipated, but it's an incremental change that seems compatible with the process.
bewaretheirs|2 years ago
Perhaps it will be like a "tape" laid down with the proper orientation for each conductor. Perhaps you'll need separate north-south and east-west and maybe diagonal layers with special attention to inter-layer connections.
largbae|2 years ago
dekhn|2 years ago
(The EE I worked with later didn't believe me. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnet#Persist... and note that the loss was due to details of magnetic superconductors, not superconductors in general)
Ajay-p|2 years ago
Thanks to everyone. I understand this much better.