A new form of matter: Jahn-Teller metals - insulators that become superconductors

Solid, liquid, gas and plasma are the common ways of looking at matter. Scientists are more likely to refer to other more advanced states, like Bose-Einstein condensates, degenerate matter, supersolids, quark-gluon plasma (created in the LHC), et al - here's the complete list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_of_matter

Now comes an important discovery, a new state of matter called Jahn-Teller "metals", a discovery based on the Jahn-Teller Distortion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahn–Teller_effect (I know, tough to read). By applying pressure to common insulating molecules, but in the form of actually chemically squeezing in other atoms, they get them to conduct electricity like metals, become magnets, and at 138K (-135C) become superconductors (the current high-temperature superconducting record candidate is 194K - https://www.sciencenews.org/article/high-temperature-superconductivity-record-awaits-confirmation). In the latest discovery, rubidium is injected into Carbon-60 molecules to achieve this effect. Again, one of the key discoveries here is that you DON'T need to apply *external* pressure to achieve superconductivity.

Read this first http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-discovered-a-new-state-of-matter-the-jahn-teller-effect and then watch the dumbed-down version in the video below

"This is what the rubidium atoms do: apply pressure. Usually when we think about adding pressure, we think in terms of squeezing something, forcing its molecules closer together by brute force. But it's possible to do the same thing chemically, tweaking the distances between molecules by adding or subtracting some sort of barrier between them - sneaking in some extra atoms, perhaps.

What happens in a Jahn-Teller metal is that as pressure is applied, and as what was previously an insulator - thanks to the electrically-distorting Jahn-Teller effect - becomes a metal, the effect persists for a while. The molecules hang on to their old shapes. So, there is an overlap of sorts, where the material still looks an awful lot like an insulator, but the electrons also manage to hop around as freely as if the material were a conductor."

Click to expand...

Some day, high temperature superconductivity is going to fundamentally transform electronics, and the march is on.