Covalent Superconductor

Covalent Superconductor

Covalent semiconductors are such solids as diamond, silicon, germanium, silicon carbide and silicon-germanium where atoms are linked by covalent bonds. Most of those materials, at least in their bulk form, are well studied and rarely hit the front pages of the top scientific journals in the last decade. However, issue 23 of volume 93 (2004) of a major physics journal Physical Review Letters contained as many as 4 papers on diamond. Those papers were a reaction to a breakthrough discovery of superconductivity in synthetic diamond grown by high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT) method. The discovery had no practical importance but surprised most scientists as superconductivity has not been considered seriously in covalent semiconductors.