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，这是由于迫切需要解决世纪的技术挑战，例如能量传输和数据处理。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动机。超导性是一种描述材料在不经历任何电阻的情况下导电的能力的现象。这种特性使他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动机，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。此外，利用超导电路开发用于信息处理和通信的超导量子比特（quantum bits），也有很大潜力为量子技术研究做出贡献。尽管超导体有许多潜在的突破性用途，但由于超导体需要冷却到非常低的临界温度才能出现超导性，因此其广泛应用受到阻碍。室温超导体被认为是凝聚态物理学的圣杯，已经被探索了世纪。高温超导体在20世纪80年代首次被发现，从那时起，大量的研究工作一直致力于控制这些材料的性能。铁基高温超导体于2008年首次被发现，从那时起，人们发现了各种各样的超导材料，它们显示出更高的临界温度和高电流密度。一个主要的优势是铁的天然丰度高，在所有金属中最高，这使得该技术的潜在广泛实际应用可行且可持续，而铁矿石开采不太可能引起地缘政治问题，就像锂或钴的情况一样，当前电池技术的金属成分。该项目的重点，其中福尔斯落在EPSRC物理科学（功能陶瓷和无机物）的研究主题，是合成新的铁基超导体，这是令人鼓舞的设备应用方面。该项目的目的是通过探索性的水热和溶剂热合成来设计具有不寻常结构图案和新颖结构单元的新型层状铁基相。确定成分-结构-性质的关系将是研究这类材料超导性起源和优化其磁性，电子和超导性质的核心。将探索新合成结构的化学和物理调整，以提高最大临界温度并控制超导状态。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.