Superconductivity Ppt Free Download
Delena Femmer
The superconductivity phenomenon was discovered in 1911 by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a phenomenon which can only be explained by quantum mechanics. It is characterized by the Meissner effect, the complete cancelation of the magnetic field in the interior of the superconductor during its transitions into the superconducting state. The occurrence of the Meissner effect indicates that superconductivity cannot be understood simply as the idealization of perfect conductivity in classical physics.
A superconductor can be Type I, meaning it has a single critical field, above which all superconductivity is lost and below which the magnetic field is completely expelled from the superconductor; or Type II, meaning it has two critical fields, between which it allows partial penetration of the magnetic field through isolated points.[8] These points are called vortices.[9] Furthermore, in multicomponent superconductors it is possible to have a combination of the two behaviours. In that case the superconductor is of Type-1.5.[10]
Several physical properties of superconductors vary from material to material, such as the critical temperature, the value of the superconducting gap, the critical magnetic field, and the critical current density at which superconductivity is destroyed. On the other hand, there is a class of properties that are independent of the underlying material. The Meissner effect, the quantization of the magnetic flux or permanent currents, i.e. the state of zero resistance are the most important examples. The existence of these "universal" properties is rooted in the nature of the broken symmetry of the superconductor and the emergence of off-diagonal long range order. Superconductivity is a thermodynamic phase, and thus possesses certain distinguishing properties which are largely independent of microscopic details. Off diagonal long range order is closely connected to the formation of Cooper pairs.
In superconducting materials, the characteristics of superconductivity appear when the temperature T is lowered below a critical temperature Tc. The value of this critical temperature varies from material to material. Conventional superconductors usually have critical temperatures ranging from around 20 K to less than 1 K. Solid mercury, for example, has a critical temperature of 4.2 K. As of 2015, the highest critical temperature found for a conventional superconductor is 203 K for H2S, although high pressures of approximately 90 gigapascals were required.[19] Cuprate superconductors can have much higher critical temperatures: YBa2Cu3O7, one of the first cuprate superconductors to be discovered, has a critical temperature above 90 K, and mercury-based cuprates have been found with critical temperatures in excess of 130 K. The basic physical mechanism responsible for the high critical temperature is not yet clear. However, it is clear that a two-electron pairing is involved, although the nature of the pairing ( s \displaystyle s wave vs. d \displaystyle d wave) remains controversial.[20]
When a superconductor is placed in a weak external magnetic field H, and cooled below its transition temperature, the magnetic field is ejected. The Meissner effect does not cause the field to be completely ejected but instead, the field penetrates the superconductor but only to a very small distance, characterized by a parameter λ, called the London penetration depth, decaying exponentially to zero within the bulk of the material. The Meissner effect is a defining characteristic of superconductivity. For most superconductors, the London penetration depth is on the order of 100 nm.
A superconductor with little or no magnetic field within it is said to be in the Meissner state. The Meissner state breaks down when the applied magnetic field is too large. Superconductors can be divided into two classes according to how this breakdown occurs. In Type I superconductors, superconductivity is abruptly destroyed when the strength of the applied field rises above a critical value Hc. Depending on the geometry of the sample, one may obtain an intermediate state[24] consisting of a baroque pattern[25] of regions of normal material carrying a magnetic field mixed with regions of superconducting material containing no field. In Type II superconductors, raising the applied field past a critical value Hc1 leads to a mixed state (also known as the vortex state) in which an increasing amount of magnetic flux penetrates the material, but there remains no resistance to the flow of electric current as long as the current is not too large. At a second critical field strength Hc2, superconductivity is destroyed. The mixed state is actually caused by vortices in the electronic superfluid, sometimes called fluxons because the flux carried by these vortices is quantized. Most pure elemental superconductors, except niobium and carbon nanotubes, are Type I, while almost all impure and compound superconductors are Type II.
Superconductivity was discovered on April 8, 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who was studying the resistance of solid mercury at cryogenic temperatures using the recently produced liquid helium as a refrigerant.[26] At the temperature of 4.2 K, he observed that the resistance abruptly disappeared.[27] In the same experiment, he also observed the superfluid transition of helium at 2.2 K, without recognizing its significance. The precise date and circumstances of the discovery were only reconstructed a century later, when Onnes's notebook was found.[28] In subsequent decades, superconductivity was observed in several other materials. In 1913, lead was found to superconduct at 7 K, and in 1941 niobium nitride was found to superconduct at 16 K.
Great efforts have been devoted to finding out how and why superconductivity works; the important step occurred in 1933, when Meissner and Ochsenfeld discovered that superconductors expelled applied magnetic fields, a phenomenon which has come to be known as the Meissner effect.[29] In 1935, Fritz and Heinz London showed that the Meissner effect was a consequence of the minimization of the electromagnetic free energy carried by superconducting current.[30]
The theoretical model that was first conceived for superconductivity was completely classical: it is summarized by London constitutive equations. It was put forward by the brothers Fritz and Heinz London in 1935, shortly after the discovery that magnetic fields are expelled from superconductors. A major triumph of the equations of this theory is their ability to explain the Meissner effect,[29] wherein a material exponentially expels all internal magnetic fields as it crosses the superconducting threshold. By using the London equation, one can obtain the dependence of the magnetic field inside the superconductor on the distance to the surface.[31]
Also in 1950, Maxwell and Reynolds et al. found that the critical temperature of a superconductor depends on the isotopic mass of the constituent element.[35][36] This important discovery pointed to the electron-phonon interaction as the microscopic mechanism responsible for superconductivity.
The complete microscopic theory of superconductivity was finally proposed in 1957 by Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer.[33] This BCS theory explained the superconducting current as a superfluid of Cooper pairs, pairs of electrons interacting through the exchange of phonons. For this work, the authors were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1972.
The first practical application of superconductivity was developed in 1954 with Dudley Allen Buck's invention of the cryotron.[40] Two superconductors with greatly different values of the critical magnetic field are combined to produce a fast, simple switch for computer elements.
Until 1986, physicists had believed that BCS theory forbade superconductivity at temperatures above about 30 K. In that year, Bednorz and Müller discovered superconductivity in lanthanum barium copper oxide (LBCO), a lanthanum-based cuprate perovskite material, which had a transition temperature of 35 K (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1987).[7] It was soon found that replacing the lanthanum with yttrium (i.e., making YBCO) raised the critical temperature above 90 K.[50]
In 2008, holographic superconductivity, which uses holographic duality or AdS/CFT correspondence theory, was proposed by Gubser, Hartnoll, Herzog, and Horowitz, as a possible explanation of high-temperature superconductivity in certain materials.[58]
In 2018, a research team from the Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discovered superconductivity in bilayer graphene with one layer twisted at an angle of approximately 1.1 degrees with cooling and applying a small electric charge. Even if the experiments were not carried out in a high-temperature environment, the results are correlated less to classical but high temperature superconductors, given that no foreign atoms need to be introduced.[68] The superconductivity effect came about as a result of electrons twisted into a vortex between the graphene layers, called "skyrmions". These act as a single particle and can pair up across the graphene's layers, leading to the basic conditions required for superconductivity.[69]
Other early markets are arising where the relative efficiency, size and weight advantages of devices based on high-temperature superconductivity outweigh the additional costs involved. For example, in wind turbines the lower weight and volume of superconducting generators could lead to savings in construction and tower costs, offsetting the higher costs for the generator and lowering the total levelized cost of electricity (LCOE).[78]
Promising future applications include high-performance smart grid, electric power transmission, transformers, power storage devices, compact fusion power devices, electric motors (e.g. for vehicle propulsion, as in vactrains or maglev trains), magnetic levitation devices, fault current limiters, enhancing spintronic devices with superconducting materials,[79] and superconducting magnetic refrigeration. However, superconductivity is sensitive to moving magnetic fields, so applications that use alternating current (e.g. transformers) will be more difficult to develop than those that rely upon direct current. Compared to traditional power lines, superconducting transmission lines are more efficient and require only a fraction of the space, which would not only lead to a better environmental performance but could also improve public acceptance for expansion of the electric grid.[80] Another attractive industrial aspect is the ability for high power transmission at lower voltages.[81] Advancements in the efficiency of cooling systems and use of cheap coolants such as liquid nitrogen have also significantly decreased cooling costs needed for superconductivity.
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