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Superconductivity at 39 K in magnesium diboride

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Abstract

In the light of the tremendous progress that has been made in raising the transition temperature of the copper oxide superconductors (for a review, see ref. 1), it is natural to wonder how high the transition temperature, Tc, can be pushed in other classes of materials. At present, the highest reported values of Tc for non-copper-oxide bulk superconductivity are 33 K in electron-doped CsxRbyC60 (ref. 2), and 30 K in Ba1-xKxBiO3 (ref. 3). (Hole-doped C60 was recently found4 to be superconducting with a Tc as high as 52 K, although the nature of the experiment meant that the supercurrents were confined to the surface of the C60 crystal, rather than probing the bulk.) Here we report the discovery of bulk superconductivity in magnesium diboride, MgB2. Magnetization and resistivity measurements establish a transition temperature of 39 K, which we believe to be the highest yet determined for a non-copper-oxide bulk superconductor.

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Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3: Magnetic susceptibility χ of MgB2 as a function of temperature.
Figure 4

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Science Research from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan and by a grant from CREST.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Aoyama-Gakuin University, Chitosedai, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, 157-8572, Japan

    Jun Nagamatsu, Norimasa Nakagawa, Takahiro Muranaka, Yuji Zenitani & Jun Akimitsu

  2. CREST, Japan Science and Technology Corporation, Kawaguchi, Saitama, 332-0012, Japan

    Jun Akimitsu

Authors
  1. Jun Nagamatsu
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  2. Norimasa Nakagawa
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  3. Takahiro Muranaka
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  4. Yuji Zenitani
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  5. Jun Akimitsu
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Correspondence to Jun Akimitsu.

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Nagamatsu, J., Nakagawa, N., Muranaka, T. et al. Superconductivity at 39 K in magnesium diboride. Nature 410, 63–64 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35065039

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35065039

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