An international team of scientists has uncovered a configuration of metal-hydrogen atoms that are much more tightly spaced than had been assumed for decades — a feature that could possibly enable superconductivity at or near room temperature and pressure.

Such a superconducting material, carrying electricity without any energy loss due to resistance, would revolutionize energy efficiency in a broad range of consumer and industrial applications.

Some of the most promising ‘high-temperature’ superconductors, such as lanthanum decahydride, can start superconducting at about 8.0 degrees Fahrenheit, but unfortunately also require enormous pressures as high as 22 million pounds per square inch, or nearly 1,400 times the pressure exerted by water at the deepest part of Earth’s deepest ocean,” said Russell J. Hemley, Professor and Distinguished Chair in the Natural Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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