Superconductors deserve attention, but so does our anxiety about technology itself.

By Qian Ren

Edited by Jing Liu

After ChatGPT, another new technology has captured the world's attention.

Ten days ago, a team of Korean scientists published two papers claiming to have discovered the world's first room-temperature superconducting material — LK-99, a copper-doped lead-apatite crystal. They even released the fabrication method publicly, sparking a global frenzy of material synthesis and replication experiments.

As of yesterday afternoon, laboratories in China, the US, and Russia simultaneously announced preliminary verification of certain superconducting signatures in LK-99. Among them, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) successfully replicated the magnetic levitation experiment. A Bilibili creator named "Guanshankou Male Technician" posted a video showing spontaneous levitation of a sample in a magnetic field, with the crystal achieving a larger levitation angle than samples obtained by the Korean team. The video surpassed 4.5 million views in just nine hours.

Since Dutch scientist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes observed superconductivity in mercury at minus 269 degrees Celsius in 1911, "how to achieve superconductivity under normal conditions" has been a century-long pursuit in academia. The relentless drive stems from the energy revolution it would unleash.

Room-temperature superconductivity would be fundamentally different from high- and low-temperature variants: if achieved, power transmission and distribution systems would suffer virtually zero resistance losses. This means solar and wind energy could be transmitted over long distances, electricity prices would plummet, maglev transportation would become reality, and breakthroughs in other fields like controlled nuclear fusion would accelerate. Controlled nuclear fusion is also a direction that Chinese investors are rushing into — projects like Energy Singularity, Star Ring Energy, and Yixi Technology have been among the hottest deals in recent years.

The secondary market was the first to get excited. A-share room-temperature superconception stocks surged collectively. Farsheng hit the daily limit three times in five days, while Yongding Shares, Zhongchao Holdings, Baili Electric, and Zhongfu Industrial also hit their upper limits. The New Materials 50 ETF's holding Western Superconducting jumped over 7%, while US superconductor stock AMSC soared as much as 150% in pre-market trading.

The primary market was also stirring. "The HUST venture capital circle is going crazy, saying they're waiting to spin out teams and start companies in a few years," a hard-tech investor and HUST alumnus told Waves after confirming the news with the university's materials school. He quickly launched a dedicated materials VC community: "We're planning to first invite R&D experts from HUST's materials and optoelectronics programs — the strongest team at China's Optics Valley — while bringing together excellent entrepreneurs and hard-tech investors, initially capped at around 100 people," a community operator told Waves.

Much like the rhetoric around ChatGPT, many believe — if room-temperature superconductivity experiments succeed, it would herald humanity's fourth industrial revolution.

Waves simultaneously reached out to multiple research-background investors and industry experts. Most remained relatively calm: for the superconducting field as a whole, this may represent a breakthrough, but "successfully replicating magnetic levitation only proves LK-99 has certain diamagnetic properties, not the room-temperature superconducting characteristics claimed by the Korean team."

CAS Star is among the domestic institutions that较早布局超导材料的机构之一. Its founding partner Mi Lei told us that due to high technical barriers and long industrialization cycles, investment targets in this field were previously limited. But in recent years, with new breakthroughs in high-temperature superconductivity and compact fusion devices, entrepreneurial projects have been multiplying. Though Mi believes superconducting materials will indeed power the energy revolution over the next 60 years, he acknowledged that room-temperature superconductivity must first be proven at the laboratory stage.

Synthesizing multiple interviewees' assessments, based on current experimental results from various countries (and even the source, Korea), one cannot directly infer that a revolutionary room-temperature superconducting material has emerged — "in fact, the laboratory stage hasn't even been cleared yet."

Some context: the oxygen, phosphorus, lead, and copper used in the Korean-claimed room-temperature superconducting material system are all readily available and inexpensive. Simply put, it's a new substance formed by adding copper, then more copper, to some known materials through chemical reactions — that's LK-99.

The synthesis process is also rather crude. Step one: mix lead oxide and lead sulfate powder in a 1:1 ratio, heat in air at 725 degrees Celsius for 24 hours to produce massicot crystals. Step two: heat copper and phosphorus powder in a sealed tube at 480 degrees Celsius for 48 hours to form copper phosphide crystals. Finally: mix the two resulting crystal powders and heat in a sealed tube for 5-20 hours to produce a copper-doped lead apatite with purported room-temperature superconducting properties.

A self-media writer called "A Green Tree" observed: "The Korean team's published method is comparable to ancient alchemy — just throw a bunch of powder materials into a furnace, and superconductors come out. The equipment requirements are so low that a high school lab could do it, the process so simple that anyone could manage it."

If it's so simple, why did Korea get there first? A physics PhD-turned-investor told Waves that humanity proposed a room-temperature superconductor fabrication method long ago — using pressure between particles to lock them together. The Korean team's approach of burning different materials together happened to achieve this particle-locking feat.

"It's hard to say this isn't a coincidence; the synthesis method is more like winning the lottery," the investor explained. The process looks simple on the surface, but is actually far more complex "because you need to precisely control copper atoms at superconducting metastable sites — that is, control their position. The biggest challenge lies exactly here: copper particle movement cannot be directed; only in a small fraction of crystals will copper happen to land in the correct positions."

This perhaps explains why, ten days after the Korean team's announcement, with so many global laboratories attempting replication, only China and Russia produced two tiny samples while all others failed.

True superconductivity refers to a state where a conductor's electrical resistance drops to zero under certain conditions. For multiple industry experts, defining whether LK-99 is room-temperature superconducting hinges on whether subsequent experiments demonstrate zero-resistance characteristics — "that will be the sole milestone."

In fact, whether in Korea or internationally, the authenticity of this research remains unresolved. There was even news this morning that a team member stated the papers contained flaws, were posted without authorization by one team member, and the team has requested their withdrawal.

That this HUST experiment debuted on Bilibili is also somewhat surprising. A research professional told us that if one wants to share results before peer review, arXiv is a solid choice (where the Korean scientists published their two papers) — a repository for preprint papers. He believes uploading videos to Bilibili is not a preferred method for releasing scientific results: "Research teams would know this."

In short: the technology is indeed one of boundless promise, with merit for generations to come, but everything remains premature.

Yet judging by social media reactions yesterday, people — especially those in venture capital — nearly descended into frenzy. From last year's ChatGPT onward, wave after wave of technological surges has seen rhetoric like "humanity will be disrupted by XX" constantly tugging at primary market nerves. What excites yet unsettles them is that the life and death, rise and fall of many industries will be governed by these arcane technical terms. Last night, one VC firm hastily organized an online superconductivity seminar that quickly drew nearly 300 participants.

In an era when everyone is heavily weighted toward technology and tech investing, this is of course inevitable. After all, the core driver of commercial waves has always been underlying technological shifts. But the anxiety triggered by technological iteration in business circles is also unprecedented. Multiple tech investors estimated for us that it would likely take at least five years before room-temperature superconductivity connects with industry.

Faced with the unknown and anxiety, high alert is a form of self-protection. As in the film Avatar, humans discover a rare room-temperature superconductor called unobtanium on the planet Pandora. To obtain this material in large quantities, humans scheme endlessly, all to invade Pandora.

In any case, the bullet needs more time to fly.

Image source | Visual China

Layout | Meng Du