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Science

High-temp Superconductors of Silver and Fluorine? 17

Posted by michael from the theory-vs.-application dept.
jeffredd writes: "Two researchers at Cornell are predicting high-temperature, nearly resistance free, superconducters made of an exotic combination of silver and fluorine. The main thrust of their theory seems to revolve around the fact that even though fluoroargentates have not been found to have superconducting properties, they are very similar to oxocuprates which set the high-temp record back in 1993. This is for the hard-core physics buffs. You can read the details here"
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High-temp Superconductors of Silver and Fluorine? More

High-temp Superconductors of Silver and Fluorine?

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  • Silver Fluoride (the substance the article is talking about) is often used by dentists for fluoride treatments on weakened teeth.

    Maybe this explains why my teeth hurt when I eat something really cold. The silver fluoride makes the pain nerves superconduct.

    • Silver Fluoride (the substance the article is talking about) is often used by dentists for fluoride treatments on weakened teeth.

      Actually, no. The article talks about a very different type of silver compound.

      Silver fluoride has silver as the cation and fluorine as the anion.

      A fluoroargentate has something else as the cation (sodium and potassium were mentioned in the article), and AgFx as the anion (AgF3 and AgF4 were mentioned in the article). This is same style of compound as phosphates, nitrates, and so forth, but with an exotic, less stable anion.
  • ...nearly resistance free, superconducters ...

    Aren't all superconductors "resistance-free" by definition? Duh!

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mgarraha ( 409436 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @11:50AM (#2137762)
    911 dispatchers in Anoka, Minnesota, received a call from a woman who said she was hanging from her ceiling by a punch bowl. Paramedics learned that she had been polishing the sterling silver bowl with a fluoride toothpaste. Physicists at the University of Minnesota speculate that a thin layer of superconducting material may have formed between the toothpaste and the silver, and that a nearby television set could have induced a magnetic field which caused the bowl to levitate.
  • The silver fluoride a dentist uses is not the same kind of thing that would be a superconducter. As the article points out, these materials (a) have never been synthesized, and (b) are composed of silver, fluoride, and another element (such as potassium). Lol, it would be funny though if all of a sudden someone getting a silver fluoride dental treatment began to levitate because of some nearby magnetic field.

  • While the theory behind this new, high-level superconductor is very interesting there are two important isssues that should be sorted out before we can start celebrating this new discovery:

    • Firstly, it is only a theory. No actual tests involving this new compound have been performed yet, so for the moment it's merely a very educated guess.
    • Secondly, the flouroargentates contain Silver in unusually high oxidation states and so the material easily loses Flourine when heated. This becomes a problem as Flourine is the most oxidising of the elements and has the nastly tendancy to corrode glass and some other ceramics. Anyone who has worked with Hydroflouric Acid would agree with me here (HF not only burns your skin but has some other nasty side-effects such as drawing out Calcium from the bones). So containment is going to be a significant problem (and hence makes it very difficult to fashion Silver flouroargentate into wires that would transmit electricity, for example).

    So while this is very interesting news for the field of high-temperature superconductors (and also interesting for me as I am a high-school Physics student), my advice is to wait and see. Don't get your hopes up until the results from the practical experiments come out.

    It might also be useful to note that there is another compound that has a transition temperature similar to this one. It's a compound of Mercury (although I am unsure which, all constructive suggestions are welcome) and has a transition temperature of around 120K or so.

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