IN MARCH, physicists were shocked when a common lab chemical, magnesium
diboride, turned out to work as a superconductor at up to 40 kelvin (–233
°C). Now Helge Rosner and colleagues at the University of California, Davis,
think a related compound, lithium borocarbide, should superconduct all the way
up to 115 kelvin (–158 °C).
The newcomer is put together just like magnesium diboride,
only with lithium atoms replacing the magnesium atoms, and a
carbon atom replacing every other boron atom
(www.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0111592).
But there’s a snag—to make it conduct electricity at
all, it will have to be…
