Imagine electric cars that charge wirelessly while driving, computers that are hundreds of times faster, and clean energy flowing without waste.
These ideas might sound like science fiction, but they could one day become reality thanks to a special kind of material called a superconductor.
Superconductors are materials that can carry electricity with no resistance, meaning no energy is lost as heat.
This makes them incredibly efficient, but there’s a catch: all known superconductors only work under extreme conditions, like freezing temperatures close to absolute zero or very high pressure.
Because of this, they are expensive and difficult to use in everyday technology.
So far, superconductors are used in high-tech machines like MRI scanners, particle accelerators, and magnetic levitation trains.
But scientists hope that, one day, new superconductors will be cheap and easy to use, opening the door to powerful advances in transportation, energy, and electronics.
Now, researchers at Columbia University may have brought that dream one step closer. A team led by physicist Cory R. Dean has discovered how to make a material called tungsten diselenide behave like a superconductor.
This material was already known to have unique properties, but this is the first time scientists have been able to turn it into a superconductor by precisely changing its structure.
The secret lies in how the atoms are arranged. Tungsten diselenide is made of flat, crystal-like layers just one or two atoms thick.
The team stacked two of these layers on top of each other and rotated one layer by just five degrees. Then they cooled the material to about -273°C, just above absolute zero.
When they added an electric charge, electrons flowed through the material at incredible speeds, much faster than in regular metals. That’s when they knew it had become a superconductor.
This breakthrough builds on earlier work with another ultra-thin material called graphene. Scientists found that twisting two layers of graphene at a certain angle also produced superconductivity.
The Columbia team wanted to know if this trick worked with materials beyond graphene—and it turns out it does.
While tungsten diselenide still needs to be extremely cold to work as a superconductor, the discovery is a major step forward. It gives scientists valuable clues about how superconductivity works and how to design materials that might one day work at room temperature.
That’s the ultimate goal.
A superconductor that works in everyday conditions would transform the world. It could lead to more efficient power grids, better medical devices, faster electronics, and more advanced transportation systems.
Dean and his team believe their discovery could be the key to unlocking this future.
While more research is needed, their work offers new hope that superconductors will become not just powerful, but practical and affordable as well.
