under pressure? The superconducting paper was pulled out at room temperature when analyzing the data

The journal has retracted a groundbreaking research paper claiming to show the first room-temperature superconductor nature Due to concerns about her analysis of the data, after allegations the results were manipulated.

Superconductors are materials that show no electrical resistance and are useful for many applications, including nuclear magnetic resonance machines, quantum computing, and particle accelerators. However, all superconducting materials currently require extremely cold temperatures (below 150 K) or very high pressures. Room-temperature superconductors will revolutionize the way we deal with electric charges and are considered by some to be the “holy grail” of chemistry.

The retracted article, written by a team led by Ranja Dias of the University of Rochester, USA, and Ashkan Salamat of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, USA, was published in October 2020 and appears to come a little closer to this goal. . The team claimed to have detected superconductivity in carbonic sulfur hydride (CSH) at a temperature of about 288 K (15 degrees Celsius), albeit at an extreme pressure of 155 gigapascals — about 1.55 million times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. The result was widely welcomed, with suggestions that it could win a Nobel Prize, and was seen as a herald of a possible new era in superconductors. It has since been viewed more than 100,000 times.

Evidence for superconductivity in hydride was based on the analysis of magnetoresistance and susceptibility data. However, questions began to arise in November 2020, when Jorge Hirsch of the University of California, San Diego, USA requested untreated allergy data, only to have his request denied. resulted in this nature Add a disclaimer stating that there are “not mentioned data access restrictions on the back [the] paper’, before the authors published the preliminary data in December of last year.

Hirsch then began with Dirk van der Marel of the University of Geneva to carry out further investigations. Their analysis showed, Hirsch says, that the team was unable to produce these results in the manner described in the paper, or from the raw data they obtained. Additionally, the duo said the team’s results could not have been produced “without using procedures that can only be described as data modification and manipulation.” By this time, Hirsch, along with Frank Marsilio of the University of Alberta, Canada, had also questioned the paper’s impedance data, which led to a paper on “raised questions” in nature In August 2021.

Now the document has been removed, with nature Noting that “some of the key steps in data processing – i.e. applying background subtractions… use a non-standard user defined procedure”. The details of this procedure were not specified in the document and the validity of it was questioned…. The nature The editors concluded, “We believe that these processing issues undermine confidence in the published magnetic susceptibility data set, and we are retracting the article accordingly.”

Hirsch welcomed the decision, but said the retraction notice does not address his claims. “nature It appears to accept the authors’ claim that what they call “raw data” is actually data that has been measured in the lab, using lab equipment and a physical sample,” says Hirsch. “In reality, however, we provided nature Clear mathematical evidence that what the authors say is “raw data” is not. Hirsch called on the National Science Foundation, which funded the work, and the University of Rochester to “engage in a comprehensive review of the facts”.

respond to chemistry world, Dias notes that “the retraction request does not call into question the observed state of the physical superconductivity of CSH”, only the methodology, and that the team’s results have been replicated in terms of properties, synthesis, and determination of the structure used. “Not all of the article’s authors agree to back off,” Dias says. “We stand by our work and will reintroduce the paper with the plot of sensitivity raw data by naturerecommendation.