Controlling the properties of new superconducting materials

全球对低成本、高效和可持续的功能材料的需求不断增加，这是因为应对21世纪的技术挑战的迫切需要，例如能量转移和数据处理。超导材料有着广泛的应用，所有这些都可以改变我们的日常生活，从量子计算到新型电机。超导是一种现象，描述了一种材料在没有任何电阻的情况下导电的能力。这一特性使它们能够引领下一代创新和尖端技术，未来的潜在用途包括航空航天工业中的超导电机，先进磁共振成像(MRI)扫描仪中的超导磁体，以及用于高效电能传输的超导传输线。通过利用超导电路开发用于信息处理和通信的超导量子比特(量子比特)，也有很大的潜力为量子技术研究做出贡献。尽管超导体具有许多潜在的开创性用途，但它们需要冷却到非常低的临界温度才能产生超导电性，这阻碍了它们的广泛应用。室温超导体被认为是凝聚态物理学的圣杯，一个多世纪以来一直在寻找。高温超导体在20世纪80年代首次被发现，自那时以来，人们一直致力于控制这些材料的性质。铁基高温超导体于2008年首次被发现，从那时起，各种丰富的超导材料显示出更高的临界温度和高电流密度。一个主要优势是铁的天然丰度很高，是所有金属中最高的，这使得该技术的潜在广泛实际应用是可行和可持续的，而铁矿石开采不太可能引起地缘政治问题，就像目前电池技术的金属成分锂或钴那样。该项目属于EPSRC物理科学(功能陶瓷和无机物)研究主题，其重点是合成新的铁基超导体，这在设备应用方面是令人鼓舞的。该项目的目标是通过探索性的水热和溶剂热合成，设计具有不寻常结构主题和新的构建块的新的层状铁基相。确定组成-结构-性质关系将是研究这类材料超导起源和优化其磁、电子和超导性能的核心。将探索对新合成的结构进行化学和物理调整，以提高最高临界温度并控制超导区域。新合成和优化的化合物将在钻石光源和ISIS设施中使用最先进的表征技术进行研究。

Global demand for low cost, efficient and sustainable functional materials is ever increasing due to pressing needs to address technological challenges of the 21st century, such as energy transfer and data processing. Superconducting materials have a wide range of applications, all of which could transform our daily lives, ranging from quantum computing to novel electric motors. Superconductivity is a phenomenon that describes a material's ability to conduct electricity without experiencing any resistance. This property allows them to lead the next generation of innovative and cutting-edge technologies, with the potential future uses including superconducting electric motors in the aerospace industry, superconducting magnets in advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, and superconducting transmission lines for highly efficient electrical energy transfer. There is also a big potential to contribute to the quantum technologies research through the development of superconducting qubits (quantum bits) for information processing and communication using superconducting electric circuits.Despite the many potential ground-breaking uses of superconductors, their widespread application is hindered by the fact that they need to be cooled down to very low critical temperatures for superconductivity to emerge. Room temperature superconductors are regarded as the holy grail of condensed matter physics, being sought for more than a century. High temperature superconductors were first discovered in the 1980s and since then a considerable research effort has been dedicated to controlling the properties of these materials. Iron-based high temperature superconductors were first discovered in 2008 and since then a rich variety of superconducting materials displaying increased critical temperatures and high current densities were identified. A major advantage is the high natural abundance of iron, highest among all metals, which makes a potential widespread practical application of the technology feasible and sustainable, while the iron ore extraction is unlikely to cause geopolitical issues, as was the case of lithium or cobalt, the metallic constituents of the current battery technology. The focus of this project, which falls within the EPSRC Physical Sciences (Functional ceramics and inorganics) research theme, is to synthesise new iron-based superconductors, which are encouraging in terms of device applications. The aim of the project is to design new layered iron-based phases with unusual structural motifs and novel building blocks through exploratory hydrothermal and solvothermal syntheses. Determining composition-structure-property relationships will be central to investigating the origins of superconductivity in this class of materials and optimising their magnetic, electronic, and superconducting properties. Chemical and physical tuning of the newly synthesised structures will be explored to increase maximum critical temperatures and control the superconducting regime. The newly synthesised and optimised compounds will be studied with the state-of-the-art characterisation techniques at the Diamond Light Source and the ISIS facility.