AP Seminar - High-temperature Superconductivity: A New Era Emerging from Decades-Old Quests

The 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics celebrated the discovery of superconducting copper oxides (ceramics) with transition temperatures above 30 Kelvin, marking the birth of ‘high-T_c’ (high-temperature) superconductivity. These copper oxide materials demonstrated high-T_c superconductivity, without the need for external pressure, strain, or field modulation. In the subsequent decades, a broad range of oxide-based layered superconductors—including Ti-, Bi-, Ru-, Co-, and Ni-based oxides—were investigated. These efforts culminated in the recent discovery of high-T_c superconductivity in nickel-based oxides, first under high pressure in 2023, and later under ambient pressure in 2024 (with results published in Nature in 2025). These breakthroughs challenge the presumed uniqueness of copper in the electron pairing mechanism by demonstrating high-T_c superconductivity in oxides without copper. This has sparked renewed interest in searching for other high-T_c superconductors among nickel-based and other d-electron systems. 
In this seminar, I will review the historical and contemporary developments of high-temperature superconductivity, discuss the prevalence of superconductivity across the periodic table, and provide an outlook on the potential ubiquity of high-T_c superconductivity.