C&EN talks with Leslie Schoop, solid-state chemist and superconductor debunker

Room-temperature superconductors lie somewhere near the boundary of science fact and science fiction. These hypothetical materials with zero electrical resistance could enable more powerful computers and help solve global energy problems. But while room-temperature superconducting materials are theoretically possible, no one has made one or definitively predicted one. Still, every few years or so, new claims emerge of a room-temperature superconductor. It happened again in July 2023 when a group of researchers unveiled a preprint—an article published before peer review—describing LK-99, a copper-doped lead oxide phosphate that displayed superconductivity at temperatures as high as 127 °C. But the frenzy over LK-99 spread wider and reached a higher pitch than previous reports did. After rounds of claims and counterclaims, the scientific community determined that the tantalizing properties observed in samples of the material were not a result of superconductivity . Instead, magnetism stemming from impurities in the LK-99 synthesis was to