Good news! Perhaps, a different approach will finally get us to achieve this holy grail!
Superconductivity in alkali metal doped fullerenes (K3C60) was already reported as early as 1999, but not at room temperature.
"An organic material in a metastable phase behaves a little like a room-temperature superconductor when excited with laser light. Though this behaviour fades almost as quickly as the laser pulse that induces it, the team behind the discovery say that with the right light source, it might be possible to keep the material in its superconducting-like state continuously. ..."
From the abstract:
"Photo-excitation at terahertz and mid-infrared frequencies has emerged as an effective way to manipulate functionalities in quantum materials, in some cases creating non-equilibrium phases that have no equilibrium analogue. In K3C60, a metastable zero-resistance phase was observed that has optical properties, nonlinear electrical transport and pressure dependencies compatible with non-equilibrium high-temperature superconductivity. Here we demonstrate a two-orders-of-magnitude increase in photo-susceptibility near 10 THz excitation frequency. At these drive frequencies, a metastable superconducting-like phase is observed up to room temperature. The discovery of a dominant frequency scale sheds light on the microscopic mechanism underlying photo-induced superconductivity. It also indicates a path towards steady-state operation, limited at present by the availability of a suitable high-repetition-rate optical source at these frequencies."
Fig. 1: Crystal structure and phase diagram of K3C60.
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