HOUSTON -- A University of Houston scientist discovered a material that could lead to major changes in how the world transmits and uses electricity, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
Professor Paul Chu created a material that conducts electricity almost without resistance at nearly double the temperatures of previous materials, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The material, an alloy of lanthanum, barium, copper and oxygen, is a superconductor at 40.2 degrees Kelvin or minus 388 degrees Fahrenheit. Superconductors are materials that have almost no resistance to electric current.
Professor Roy Weinstein, dean of natural sciences and mathematics, said the discovery might dramatically improve many scientific and industrial devices that use huge amounts of electricity, such as the giant magnets used to control beams of particles for smashing atoms and for the diagnosis of disease.
Eventually the world could save tens of billions of dollars in the generation and transmission of electricity, Weinstein said.
Meanwhile, AT&T Bell Laboratories in New York, following a similar line of research, reported production of an alloy that at normal pressure begins its transition to superconductivity at 40 degees Kelvin and becomes fully superconducting when cooled to 36 degrees.
Participants in that project said their approach does not require high pressure as does Chu's method.
The reports from Bell Labs and Houston are to be published simultaneously in a forthcoming issue of Physical Review Letters.
Chu described the new alloy as a mixture of powdered materials he fused together with pressure and heat -- a process called sintering -- and then ground and sintered again and again until a particular arrangement of the conductive crystals was achieved.
Chu said the exact process of making the superconductive material is being kept secret until he applies for a patent.
'Right now there is a lot of heart of toad and tail of newt,' Weinstein said. 'We won't produce these materials in quantity next month, but we will produce them next year.'
Patents generally are shared by the discoverer and the university. The arrangement in this case has not been decided, UH sources said. Chu's work is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
