HIGH temperature superconducting power cables have long been touted as a way
to end the huge losses from power grids. But nobody has been able to make the
cables carry enough current to be worth using.
Now a team from the Centre for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism at
Augsburg University in Germany says that when ordinary layers of superconducting
material are sandwiched with calcium-doped layers, they can carry six times as
much current (Nature, vol 407, p 162). 鈥淚f large-scale fabrication of
the material is possible, superconducting power cables could become viable for
the first time,鈥� says Jochen Mannhart, the leader of the Augsburg team.