Mark Goldes is the founder and CEO of Room Temperature Superconductors, Inc., which has invested several million dollars in developing a process to produce a polymer-based superconductive material which possesses very high electrical conductivity and current carrying capacity without experiencing resistive heating at peak load capacity. Goldes discusses the company’s development process and ongoing efforts to refine the manufacturing process for the commercial production of superconductive wire.
The patented ultraconductor material being developed by Room Temperature Superconductors is created through the sequential processing of amorphous polar dielectric elastomers. These materials are plastics that possess very high electrical conductivity and current densities over a range of temperatures from 1.8 to 700 degrees Kelvin. Additional experiments have established that ultraconductors don’t generate heat under high current and produce no measurable resistance at cryogenic temperature.
Room Temperature Superconductors has described the superconductive properties of the ultraconductor material as arising from superconductive “channels” in the polymer substrate that are formed during processing. Room Temperature Superconductors, Inc., was formed in 1993 to commercialize this technology after 12 years of research by the Russian Academy of Sciences Polymer Institute under the supervision of Dr. Leonid Grigorov, Ph.D., Dc.S. Since the foundation of the company, Goldes’ team has published a number peer-reviewed paper on ultraconductors, been awarded 4 US government contracts, and been granted US patent # 5,777,292, which describes their innovative process for creating the ultraconductor material.
At present, Room Temperature Superconductors has successfully created this material in thin-film materials processing, and is working to increase the density of superconducting channels within the film, as well as developing methods for developing a superconducting wire based on the material. They have established a physical model they claim to explain their experimental measurements, and have demonstrated in principle a means for developing an ultraconductor wire.
“Eventually, on a per ampere basis, ultraconductor wire is likely to be cheaper than copper. When properly processed, electron chains form in the material. They cluster in a region about one micron in diameter. Each cluster may have one million electron chains. A cluster will always carry 50 amperes, even though each is only about one fiftieth the diameter of a human hair. Ultraconductors are more than 100,000 times as conductive as gold, silver or copper.” – Mark Goldes