Painting with superconductors.Painting with superconductors The new high-temperature superconductingmaterials are brittle and ceramic and only recently have been found to have technological potential, but already people have drawn wires and films from them and made rings out of them. The latest news from IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) , in whose laboratories the first of them was discovered, is that scientists at its Thomas J. Watson Research Center The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for the IBM Research Division. The center is on three sites, with the main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, 45 miles north of New York City, a building in Hawthorne, New York, and offices in Cambridge, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., have managed to make superconducting circuits called SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) out of the new materials and have developed a technique for spray painting them onto surfaces. This photograph shows such a pattern of superconducting lines. Because SQUIDs can sense quantum-by-quantumchanges in magnetic fields magnetic fields, n.pl the spaces in which magnetic forces are detectable; created by magnetostrictive ultrasonic scalers to cause the tips of instruments such as ultrasonic scalers to vibrate. , they are frequently employed as high-sensitivity magnetometers. The Josephson junctions that are the basic elements in SQUIDs have many actual and potential uses in microcircuity, particularly as switches in computer circuitry computer circuitry Complete path or combination of interconnected paths for electron flow in a computer. Computer circuits are binary in concept, having only two possible states. . However, previous Josephson junctions needed refrigeration refrigeration, process for drawing heat from substances to lower their temperature, often for purposes of preservation. Refrigeration in its modern, portable form also depends on insulating materials that are thin yet effective. by liquid helium to a temperature of 4 kelvins to operate, and that limited their prospects. These new IBM SQUIDs are fully superconducting at 68 kelvins and so can operate with refrigeration by liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen temperature is normally 77 kelvins, but adjusting the pressure can reduce it to 68 K, IBM says. The new superconducting substances,which are compounds of copper oxide with yttrium yttrium (ĭt`rēəm) [for Ytterby, a town in Sweden], metallic chemical element; symbol Y; at. no. 39; at. wt. 88.9059; m.p. about 1,522°C;; b.p. 3,338°C;; sp. gr. about 4.45; valence +3. Yttrium is a highly crystalline iron-gray metal. and barium, are amenable to the technique known as plasma spraying, IBM scientists have found. In plasma spraying the substance is heated until it is ionized i·on·ize tr. & intr.v. i·on·ized, i·on·iz·ing, i·on·iz·es To convert or be converted totally or partially into ions. i and then quickly deposited on a suitable surface and cooled. After annealling, the painted substance is completely superconducting, again at 68 K. IBM researchers have managed to coat preformed shapes such as wires, contoured and flat surfaces, and even tubes. They can paint lines with the superconductors on substrates commonly used in making conventional printed circuitry. Such superconducting lines could someday form connections in computer circuitry, thus eliminating some serious hindrances to computer speed and data-processing volume. |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion