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AFM Laser Hard Drive Superconducter Finder

AFM piles up clumps of molecules on a thing rather like a disk drive platter, a laser warms them to crystallize, then the read head sees if any of the 300 million samples per year are superconductive as the platter is tested at various temperatures
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Lets apply mass screening to finding superconductors!

Someting like an AFM piles up little heaps of atoms, a laser warmly combines them, that takes less than 1/10 of a second. This occurs 8760 hours/year, or 525600 minutes, 31536000 seconds, creating 315,360,000 little heaps of fused atoms each year. then, since this was occuring on something very like a disk drive platter, the magnetic read head detects new superconductors.

Naturally we cool it to 97 kelvin, just to verify the YBCO superconductor clumps behave as predicted, that is the meissner effect from superconductivity causes a detectable magnetic variation. Then we just gradually raise the temperature of the spinning platter up to near 140 K where the HgBaCaCuO type superconductor blobs continue to show their superconductivity. Then as we get to 200K or even 273K perhaps some of the 300 million or so variations are also superconductive. Hurrah!

This one fairly simple machine automatically seeks superconductors. Just to amuse the world, anyone can specify a formula, if their formula is a new superconducting record they get a prize! so there is a crowdsourced theory based insight approach as well as just mass combinatorial testing.

If there were ten of these machines they could test 3 billion new compounds a year.

beanangel, Aug 30 2012

High speed AFM images a diffraction grating at 1 second http://www.linkedin...e-8c95-0e460b5b79c0
[beanangel, Aug 30 2012]

15 nanometer sized features from a laser http://ultralaser.i...ta/papers/CThV4.pdf
[beanangel, Aug 30 2012]

Molecular beam epitaxy http://en.wikipedia...ecular_beam_epitaxy
[beanangel, Aug 30 2012]

[link]






       First item, if a super conductor is an alloy, it won't exhibit the effects at the scale an AFM can "pile up atoms". If it's got covalent bonds, than an AFM can't create them.   

       Second, it's going to be cheaper (and faster) just to make a macro scale sample than do it with an AFM.   

       Third, a laser is lousy for this because it can't focus tight enough. Also, a laser shouldn't be neccesary because the atoms would have to exist in an inert atmosphere, so you should be able to position them with van Der Waals force.
MechE, Aug 30 2012
  

       Hey, there's capital letters and paragraph breaks in this idea...
normzone, Aug 30 2012
  

       Well, it seems possible that a giant scoop AFM might move a larger quantity of atoms.   

       There is an online reference to imaging a diffraction grating at 1 second. They do not say how many ||||| that is, yet an order of magnitude faster seems possible. Notably 1 sample per second is still 30 million samples per year.   

       I think there are a plurality of online references about lasers applied to just one or a few atoms. If you are talking about a semiconductor feature length kind of effect, that is a different thing. Theres is a paper (link) that uses laser scanning to create features of 15nm size
beanangel, Aug 30 2012
  

       I like this idea. I like the idea of using some sort of combinatorial chemistry approach combined with mass screening.   

       I also like the sentence structure, grammar, use of capital letters and punctuation.
MaxwellBuchanan, Aug 30 2012
  

       // less than 1/10 of a second //   

       ... which is still waaay slower than synthetic-aperture MBE ... so why bother ?
8th of 7, Aug 30 2012
  

       well Id certainly be appreciative if you did it that way. Molecular beam epitaxy also replies to [MechE] comment about a wide range of molecule forms   

       wikipedia says Molecular beam epitaxy is also used for the deposition of some types of organic semiconductors
beanangel, Aug 30 2012
  
      
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