Room Temperature Superconductivity Revolution: Foreshadowed by Victorians, Enabled by Millenials

Abstract

Room temperature superconductivity has been the most prominent, highly ambitious, but still imaginable, acme of materials physics for half a century. The struggle toward this revolution was foreshadowed by a Victorian novelist and championed,unsuccessfully, by dogged physicists in the 1960s to 1980s who had a workable theory but uncompliant materials. Discovery of superconductivity of H$_3$S at 200 K in the 160-200 GPa pressure range has renewed anticipation of yet higher values of the critical temperature T$_c$. With the several reports of metalization of hydrogen, and theoretical extensions enabled by modern algorithms and unprecedented computational hardware and spurred forward by the Materials Genome Initiative, it is possible that the room temperature precipice has thereby already been breached in a silent revolution. This concise note draws analogies of this development with an earlier revolution.