The search for new superconductors—materials that expel magnetic fields and perfectly transmit electrical current below a critical temperature—has occupied countless physicists, chemists, materials scientists, and engineers for more than a century. So when a group at Stanford University discovered in 2019 that nickel oxides could superconduct,1 a burst of research ensued to reproduce, improve, and understand their fundamental behavior and their possible technological applications.2 (For more on the discovery, see Physics Today, November 2019, page 19.)
To read more, click here.