Experimental demonstration of superconducting critical temperature increase in electromagnetic metamaterials

TL;DR

This study experimentally demonstrates that embedding dielectric nanoparticles in a superconductor can modestly increase its critical temperature, suggesting a new route for enhancing superconductor performance.

Contribution

The paper provides experimental evidence that dielectric metamaterials can raise the critical temperature of superconductors, a novel approach in superconductor engineering.

Findings

Critical temperature increased by ~0.15 K in tin with dielectric nanoparticles.

Increase observed with both barium titanate and strontium titanate.

Metamaterial approach shows potential for superconductor enhancement.

Abstract

A recent proposal that the metamaterial approach to dielectric response engineering may increase the critical temperature of a composite superconductor-dielectric metamaterial has been tested in experiments with compressed mixtures of tin and barium titanate nanoparticles of varying composition. An increase of the critical temperature of the order of 0.15 K compared to bulk tin has been observed for 40% volume fraction of barium titanate nanoparticles. Similar results were also obtained with compressed mixtures of tin and strontium titanate nanoparticles.