A superconducting sheet of lead only two atoms thick, the thinnest superconducting metal layer ever created, has been developed by physicists at The University of Texas at Austin.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory are part of collaborative team that’s used a brand new instrument at the DOE’s Spallation Neutron Source to probe iron-arsenic compounds, the “hottest” new find in the race to explain and develop superconducting materials.

An important advance in understanding how the electrons in some materials become superconducting has been made by researchers from UC Davis, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and UC Irvine.

Transporting energy without any loss, travelling in magnetically levitated trains, carrying out medical imaging (MRI) with small-scale equipment: all these things could come true if we had superconducting materials that worked at room temperature. Today, researchers at CNRS have taken another step forward on the road leading to this ultimate goal.