Celebrating a Century of 1911
Superconductivity
(1911 – 2011)
105th Topical Symposium of the
NY Section of the
American Physical Society
State University of New York
College at Oneonta
October 7 – 8, 2011
1960
1961
While working as a physicist at the GE R&D center in
Niskayuna, four years before earning his doctorate, Ivar
Giaever conceived the idea of using
electron tunneling to measure the energy
gap in a superconductor. This technique
both provided a new method for studying
superconductivity and opened the possibility
of a new class of electronic devices.
1979
Dr. Raymond Damadian (a native of Forest Hills, NY), completes
construction of the first whole-body MRI scanner, which he
dubbed the “Indomitable” and is
now owned by the Smithsonian
Institution. On July 3 the first MRI
exam was performed on a human
being. It took almost five hours to
produce one image.
Transrapid 05 was the first
maglev train with longstator
propulsion licensed for
passenger transportation.
German researchers Walther Meissner (left)
and Robert Ochsenfeld (right) discovered that a
superconducting material will repel a magnetic
field. The Meissner Effect is
so strong that a magnet can
actually be levitated over a
superconductive material.
Superconductivity is first observed in mercury by Dutch physicist
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes of Leiden University when he cooled
it to the temperature of liquid helium, 4 degrees Kelvin (-452°F,
-269°C), and noted that its resistance suddenly disappeared
Brian D. Josephson, a graduate student at Cambridge University, predicted that electrical current would
flow between two superconducting materials - even when they are separated by a non-superconductor
or insulator. His prediction was later confirmed and won him a share of the 1973
Nobel Prize in Physics.
This tunneling phenomenon is today known as the “Josephson Effect” and has been
applied to electronic devices such as the SQUID, an instrument capable of detecting
even the weakest magnetic fields.
1979
1980
1988
YBCO (yttrium barium copper
oxide) was the first material
to become superconducting
above 77 K, the boiling
point of liquid nitrogen.
All materials developed
before 1986 became
superconducting only at temperatures near the boiling points of liquid
helium or liquid hydrogen — the highest being Nb3Ge at 23 K. The
significance of the discovery of YBCO is the much lower cost of the
refrigerant used to cool the material to below the critical temperature.
2001
BSCCO (bismuth strontium calcium copper
oxide) as a new class of superconductor was
discovered by Maeda and coworkers at the
National Research Institute for Metals in
Japan, though at the time they were unable
to determine its precise composition and
structure. It is the first high-temperature
superconductor which does not contain a rare
earth element.
2003
Magnesium diboride (MgB2) becomes
superconducting at 39 degrees
Kelvin, one of the highest known
transition temperatures (Tc) of any
superconductor. What’s more, its
puzzling characteristics
include more than one
superconducting energy gap,
a state of affairs anticipated
in theory but never before
seen experimentally.
The possibility of type-II superconductivity was
theoretically predicted by Alexei Alexeyevich
Abrikosov, for which a Nobel Prize in Physics was
awarded in 2003.
A Type-II superconductor is
a
superconductor characterized by the formation
of vortex lattices in magnetic field. It has
a
continuous second order phase transition from the
superconducting to the normal state within an increasing magnetic field.
2008
FONAR introduces the world’s first commercial MRI (a whole-body MRI
scanner) and the first commercial
application of superconductivity
Westinghouse Electric Corp. is awarded a contract
to design and build the world’s first commercial
superconducting generator.
1990
Reliance Electric
demonstrates the
first HTS DC motor
Operation of the world’s first HTS power transmission cable system in
a commercial power grid. The 138,000 volt (138 kV) system, which
consists of three individual HTS power cable phases running in parallel,
is operating successfully in LIPA’s
Holbrook, NY transmission right of way.
The cable system, including six outdoor
terminations for connection to LIPA’s
grid, was designed, manufactured and
installed by Nexans.
1975
Research began in the
US at the University of
Wisconsin to understand
the fundamental interaction
between an energy storage
unit and an electric
utility system through a
multiphase bridge. This led
to the construction of the
first SMES devices.
NSF (National Superconducting Cyclotron
Laboratory) approves construction of
a prototype superconducting magnet
that later becomes the main magnet for
NSCL’s K500 cyclotron, the world’s first
operational superconducting cyclotron.
Designing and constructing this magnet
laid the foundation for the laboratory’s
leadership in applications of superconductivity to nuclear
physics accelerators and beam transport and analysis systems.
Alex Müller and Georg Bednorz, researchers at the IBM Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon, Switzerland, created a brittle ceramic
compound that superconducted at the highest temperature then known: 30 K. What made this discovery so remarkable was that ceramics
are normally insulators, which don’t conduct electricity well at all and therefore had not been considered by many researchers as possible
high-temperature superconductor (HTS) candidates.
The Lanthanum, Barium, Copper and Oxygen compound that Müller and Bednorz synthesized, behaved
in a not-as-yet-understood way. The discovery of this first of the superconducting copper-oxides (cuprates)
won the 2 men a Nobel Prize the following year. It was later found that tiny amounts of this material were
actually superconducting at 58 K, due to a small amount of lead having been added as a calibration
standard - making the discovery even more noteworthy.
1993
1994
Reliance and EPRI demonstrate
the world’s first HTS synchronous
motor.
Working up to the 1,000 hp prototype, researchers demonstrated a series of dc motors
with stationary HTS-field windings cooled in liquid nitrogen during 1990 to 1993. The
motors showed progressively higher power outputs. Most importantly, the HTS coils did
not show any degradation after dozens of thermal cycles.
Generation of 24.0 T at 4.2 K and
23.4 T at 27 K with an HTS coil is
achieved at the MIT Francis Bitter
Magnet Laboratory
2004
1997
1999
Swiss-Swedish company ABB successfully connects the
world’s first operational high-temperature superconducting
distribution transformer to the
power supply network of the City
of Geneva, Switzerland. The threephase transformer has an output
of 630 kilovolt-amperes (kVA) and
is designed to convert power from
18.7 kilovolts (kV) to 420 volts.
2006
SupraTrans introduces a new means of urban transportation and logistics utilizing
superconducting magnetic bearings. Superconductivity is
the basis for a magnetic levitation technology that works
without electronic control but with attracting and repelling
forces to levitate a vehicle pendant or standing upright the vehicle is propulsion by a linear motor.
Research and development on the SupraTrans II continues
at evico GmbH in Dresden, Germany.
2009
Zenergy Power, using
superconducting magnets,
produces a new generation
of nonferrous induction
heaters with shorter heating
times and nearly double the
efficiency.
The mathematically-complex BCS theory explained superconductivity at temperatures close to
absolute zero for elements and simple alloys. However, at higher temperatures and with different
superconductor systems, the BCS theory has subsequently become inadequate to fully explain
how superconductivity is occurring.
1986
Founder of FONAR, Inc.
1987
The first widely-accepted theoretical understanding of superconductivity is advanced by American
physicists John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and John Schrieffer (left to right). Their Theories of
Superconductivity became know as the BCS Theory - derived from the first letter of each man’s
last name - and won them a Nobel prize in 1972.
1971
1962
When he was delayed during rush
hour traffic on the Throgs Neck
Bridge, James Powell, a researcher at
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL),
thought of using magnetically levitated
transportation to solve the traffic
problem. Powell and BNL colleague
Gordon Danby jointly worked out a
MagLev concept using static magnets mounted on a moving vehicle
to induce electrodynamic lifting and stabilizing forces in specially
shaped loops on a guideway
1977
1957
1933
The High Temperature
Superconductivity Space
Experiment (HTSSE II)
was launched on the
US Air Force’s Advanced
Research and Global
Observation Satellite
(ARGOS) as a second technology demonstrator to validate
high-temperature superconductor (HTS) components in
space-based systems.
2008
SuperPower in Schenectady,
NY joins with BOC, Sumitomo
Electric and National Grid in the
world’s first in-grid installment of
a underground HTS power cable
in Albany, NY to demonstrate the
efficiency of HTS wire for improved
electricity transmission and distribution. The demonstration
project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and New
York Energy Research & Development Authority, delivers power to
approximately 25,000 households with no issues.
Japanese scientist Y. Kamihara
and colleagues discover iron-based
superconductors. They initially reported
that an iron-based material can
conduct electricity without resistance
at 4 Kelvin. The elements in the first
known iron-based superconducting
material are iron, arsenic, oxygen, and
the rare earth lanthanum (LaFeAsO).
2010
In partnership with the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division’s Ship Engineering Station Philadelphia,
an HTS degaussing coil system was installed aboard USS Higgins (DDG 76). The new HTS degaussing coil—the
first of its kind to be installed aboard a naval vessel—successfully produced a full “coil effect” and delivered the
first-ever measurement of a degaussing system using superconductive materials as the ship completed a pass
over the U.S. Navy Magnetic Silencing Range in San Diego.
Executives and technologists representing superconductor companies and other organizations and
universities that provide research and support technologies throughout New York converged for the
first-of-its kind NY-focused economic summit. The gathering was designed to highlight the current and
potential economic benefits the technology can have for the state.
Nearly 100 representatives from the state’s high tech community, state and community leaders, business
professionals, academic institution officials, and instructors and students came together for the “New
York State Superconductor Technology Summit: Cultivating Economic Growth From Within the Empire
State.”
Acknowledgement: Many thanks to SuperPower Inc. for providing the graphics for this poster.