EEVblog 1555 - Korean LK-99 Ambient Temperature Superconductor Demo Video FAIL!

Has a Korean quantum research group cracked the holy grail of physics, an ambient temperature and pressure superconductor that will win them a Nobel prize and change humanity forever?
Maybe, maybe not, remains to be seen.
But one thing's for sure, the demo video of their LK-99 material on their website is an EPIC FAIL!
It's such an embarrassing mistake you won't believe it!
Dave shows how with a single lab experiment.

Links:

00:00 - This LK-99 ambient temperature & pressure superconductor is going to CHANGE THE WORLD!
02:52 - Low but not zero resistance? I thought this was a superconductor?
04:22 - Some journalists are actually doing their job this time
06:28 - The Meissner effect
07:11- Thunderf00t's take
08:06 - This demo video is just a total embarrassment! It's just Lenz's Law!
10:36 - Let's reproduce the demo video experiment!

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[EEVblog]

UPDATE: The Qcentre LK-99 website is not just thottle limited daily any more, it's now down for construction. I wonder if the copper plate demo video will be back?

[vladomaimun]

I disagree with Thunderfoot. If this turns out to be real, being a ceramic is in no way a dealbreaker. Large multi-chip modules are made with ceramic substrates and ceramics can be deposited on semiconductor wafers. Superconducting interconnects inside and between chips would be pretty cool.

[CMDR_Hal_Melamby]

Have to say that Nature did not publish our paper where we reported a ferromagnetic transition at 42 Kelvin for an organic material back in the mid 90s. This was a substantial gain from about 7 Kelvin that was the record at the time. Third referee knocked it out because the results were so good and they did not believe that we hadn't got a contamination issue.
Irrespective of their view we did publish in Angewante Chemie and this work was reproduced by other groups and the magnetic properties measured with a variety of different instruments. The paper is still being cited today and the record for the Currie temperature of an organic ferromagnet stood for over 20 years.

[lrmackmcbride]

A couple of comments.
1) most super conductors are ceramic so not really a big deal. Fiberglass is also ceramic, quite flexible.
2) most superconductors have a magnetic flux limit. This one is low. That has implications for the maximum current it can carry and stay a superconductor. So using it in many applications won't work as they require high currents.
3) the actual superconductor temperature range is narrow and just below the critical temperature. So at best room temperature is a misnomer unless your room is a pressure cooker. Or I am misreading the data.
4) while this will not change the world, it is interesting. It has temperature regions where it is a low resistance material seperated by jumps in resistance and a narrow interest region where the substance has very low resistance.
5) while the data could be fake, it is too easy to make to fake for long and it doesn't seem to be useful because of the low current and narrow useful temperature band (again assuming my reading is correct).

[samheasmanwhite]

IDK, there's still room to hope that some tiny fraction is doing something like superconducting, but their research is a mess of non-specific testing and lack of details, so not looking good at all.

[TheKevinFanClub]

As much I love your content, I do believe you need to try harder to be able to debunk this. Researchers aren't the best at keeping their websites updated. The most you can say basing off the copper plate eddy current demo video is that they failed to update anything on the page.

[electricalychalanged]

I actually have everything needed to do this in our lab. I will try to convince my group leader to allow me to make this. It is sadly not as cheap to make as dave thinks but still doable. I actually think, if this works out, it might be a good additive for battery electrodes. Here usually carbon black is used to inclease conductivity. This stuff could make a huge difference in that regard even if it is a bowdered ceramic.

[minilab]

As Richard Feynman said, the easiest person to fool is yourself. Imagine, if you can, the extent to which they fooled themselves. The drama...the secrecy...the ten thousand dollar fee for a WIPO patent. Ouch

[michaellyons]

There’s a lot of criticism saying that its application is limited bc it’s ceramic and isn’t ductile like copper wires but if this stuff is legit, I don’t see why it couldn’t be deposited onto substrates to create coil shapes or used in IC and PCB manufacturing as power backplanes or transmission lines or antennae. I could think of a million applications where this would be very useful in electronics. Silicon ain’t ductile.

[BigRalphSmith]

Skepticism is great. Can't have science without it. But you are going a little overboard in this video.
I'll wait for the scientific method to do it's thing and see what shakes out of the peer review filter.

[DemSci]

The Korean team didn't show any data on the change in the material's specific heat as it undergoes superconducting phase transition, nor did they show the magnetic susceptibility curve of the material. Also, they could have shown some evidence of magnetic flux pinning. Lenz's law basically describes a dampening phenomenon, but magnetic flux pinning actually causes a change in the position of lowest energy state. There should be a difference in the final stationary position of the LK99-coated copper plate when subjected to an external magnetic field, but no such change was immediately visible. But this video isn't exactly a BUST, as the amount of LK99 on the plate could be too small to give rise to any visible phenomena. Rather, it's an experimental mistake, a very unprofessional one in fact. They should have devised a protocol that demonstrates the superconductive properties of the material, instead they performed a high school Physics experiment.

[kreature]

Thunderf00t is wrong on the ceramic thing. It would not matter one iota if it is possible to make wires or not. If it is a room temp superconductor it can be molded into the right shapes directly, and you do not need multiple "windings" as you can just increase current in the superconductor... No losses.

[Bassotronics]

I told y’all it was a hoax.
EEVBlog wins! 🏆

[kimchristensen]

At 7:00 we see an object hovering when super cooled. So this is exerting quite the force to keep the cube levitated against gravity. Yet, when the so called super conductor is hanging at 8:20, they should be able to just push the disk away with the magnet without waving it around. Even on copper that would prove it was super conducting. But that's not what they do. They HAVE to wave the magnet to use Lenz law to make it move because the copper is lossy and there is no super conductor on there.

[danielfrost]

What an awesome video. Thanks so much, Mr Dunning-Kruger...

[Azraleee]

Dave, that PR video was either made by PR people, or by the scientists to make the PR people go away. It's also not the main video people are talking about, that would be the levitation video.
While there are some questions about the results, replication attempts are currently ongoing, so we should have answers soon.

[DanieleGiorgino]

I'll wait for actual replication.

[discoveringthegardenofeden]

You should watch the video more closely. Lenz's law does not apply to the phenomenon observed. The material 'stays' at a distance once movement stops. Again, when it stops moving the material remains at a distance. Lenz's law does not do that, nor do eddy currents in copper. So...Is the debunker debunked? 3, 2, 1 ...debate.

[steve_jabz]

Copper produces a pretty weak magnetic field though. That's why we add neodymium magnets to motors that actually need some torque, and why the ball still falls out the bottom when you drop it down the tube. If it was even as powerful as a fridge magnet, it would stick to the wall of the tube.
They admitted they deposited it on copper, and I doubt a quantum physics research institute didn't know copper produces an electromagnetic field.
They were probably demonstrating that it's much more powerful than copper alone, as you just confirmed.

[matsv]

It being cheramic makes no diffrance. Making cheramic superconductors bendable was cracked 15 years ago and something that is alreddy avalible as a comersial product today.

Yes, you can by bendable cheramic superconductors of the shelf today.

It's used in the japanese maglev train L0 (but not MLX01) and in several prototype fusion reactors.