Access

News and Views

Nature 424, 625-626 (7 August 2003) | doi:10.1038/424625a

Superconductivity: Lifting the gossamer veil

Piers Coleman1

Top

Copper oxides become superconductors at much higher temperatures than conventional metals. This transition might involve a state of 'gossamer' superconductivity, and new work shows how.

One of the outstanding mysteries in condensed-matter physics is that the most perfect conductors so far discovered — the high-temperature superconductors — are more like insulators than metals. Superconductivity, the flow without resistance of current through some materials, usually only occurs at very low temperatures.