Other Materials Sometimes Referred To As High-temperature Superconductors
Magnesium diboride is occasionally referred to as a high-temperature superconductor because its Tc value of 39 K is above that historically expected for BCS superconductors. However, it is more generally regarded as the highest Tc conventional superconductor, the increased Tc resulting from two separate bands being present at the Fermi energy.
Fulleride superconductors where alkali-metal atoms are intercalated into C60 molecules show superconductivity at temperatures of up to 38 K for Cs3C60.
Some organic superconductors and heavy fermion compounds are considered to be high-temperature superconductors because of their high Tc values relative to their Fermi energy, despite the Tc values being lower than for many conventional superconductors. This description may relate better to common aspects of the superconducting mechanism than the superconducting properties.
Theoretical work by Neil Ashcroft in 1968 predicted that solid metallic hydrogen at extremely high pressure should become superconducting at approximately room-temperature because of its extremely high speed of sound and expected strong coupling between the conduction electrons and the lattice vibrations. This prediction is yet to be experimentally verified.
All known high-Tc superconductors are Type-II superconductors. In contrast to Type-I superconductors, which expel all magnetic fields due to the Meissner effect, Type-II superconductors allow magnetic fields to penetrate their interior in quantized units of flux, creating "holes" or "tubes" of normal metallic regions in the superconducting bulk. Consequently, high-Tc superconductors can sustain much higher magnetic fields.
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