> temp > à-trier > making-ybco-superconductor-applied-science

Making YBCO superconductor

Applied Science - 2018-02-26

How to make and test your own pieces of YBCO superconductor.

Best how-to resources for YBCO:
http://physlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Superconductor_manual1.pdf

http://www.futurescience.com/scpart1.html

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ed078p1182.1  -- I couldn't get this to work.

All chemical purchased on eBay.

The kiln that I used:  https://www.sheffield-pottery.com/PARAGON-QUIKFIRE-6-KILN-p/pqf6.htm

Colored ferrofluid: https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Green-Ferrofluid-60ml-Display/dp/B015WNU9NM/

Pax temperature logger: http://paxinstruments.com/products/sku927/

Keithly SMU: https://www.tek.com/keithley-source-measure-units/keithley-smu-2400-series-sourcemeter



Applied Science on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AppliedScience

Emmanuel Florac - 2018-02-26

Superconductor are doable in the home lab. Needs a hell of a home lab :)

Theodore Jackson - 2019-11-24

@Sizzlean wowwwwwweeeeeeeeee

Singing bacteria huh? What kinds of music do bacteria like to sing? Or sorry, what do micro-beings like to sing?

Sizzlean - 2019-11-26

@Theodore Jackson I've been waiting for someone to make fun of my comment and it truly took way longer than I thought it would but it is so weird to see your words. To see that the idea of the micro-kingdoms would have voices is so ridiculous to you that you didn't even hiccup at the thought of some person, some engineer had the idea to create a microphone small enough to find out. A Microphone that is either wireless or has wires near the size of the smallest things that man is able to fabricate. That was not strange to you but what I said was. Did you know that some of those critters have a propeller that spins over 100,000 RPM's and uses electricity exactly how the finest motors that man has ever built do. They have the ability to create the A/C current at the brushes, does that bother you that they have electric motors that are far superior to anything man has ever dreamed up? If you understood how it was that Yahweh created the earth, then you would not find it hard to believe that a person could say to a mountain...be ye removed and go drown yourself somewhere else....and what does the scripture say??? and it (the mountain?, or the micro-kingdoms that make up the UNIT we call a mountain!!!!) would obey. It's okay for stupid white lab coat wearing bozos to talk about gravity waves, and black holes and Dark Matter and Dark Energy and you will probably believe t hem but if I tell you that "Everything with which the earth creeps" is basically the sub particles and what they build using their own selves to do it. If I tell you that the Marriage of Hydrogen and Oxygen is very stable and strong you might fall off your chair. Meanwhile you also know that people have found and are looking for KEYS to break the bonds of H2O without using a bunch of energy to do it. If a person had Yahweh's authority or mark of trust, all that would need be done is to ask and the Hydrogen would go down one hose and the oxygen down another or they could travel together in the perfect ratio and not even a lightning bolt could entice them to blow up because they would never harm a person with authority over them since this is the Number one Law. "You are never to do anything that might endanger the your own life or the life of another being or cause harm to the environment"
So to answer your question, I don't know what they are singing or what type because they are at this time Mourning the Curse that is sickening them and bringing their strength down. Man's STD's are found along with Man's DNA inserted into all of their strands at this time. The Firmament is sick and cannot do it's job which is of course to bring man the things he needs for life, to shield him from harmful rays and to do that which the weather does so as to feed both man and the animals. Anyone who cannot see this is blind, are you blind? Are you honest enough to admit the food is weak even if it's not Monsanto's crap, even Gramma's best heirloom seeds don't do what they should because Man is the cause of Global Warming but it is way different than all the B.S. that is argued about all day long. If you can't see they are either deliberately causing all the bad weather with the chem trails, or they are actively trying to slow down something they know is happening, well it doesn't matter because they did not understand who or what was responsible for the weather until The Greatest Teacher in the World Yisrayl Hawkins told them, now they know but don't have a clue how to stop it because man has no cures for any virus, never has and never will. Most people don't know that man has never had a pill or shot that would do anything to any virus but that doesn't change the fact that he doesn't and now the super bugs all need to be renamed because MRSA is no longer Methicillin resistant, it is anti-biotic Proof like a marine on Tequila with Ceramic Body armor and the Air force and Navy as back up. So laugh at me while you are still ignorant of The Gem atria which laughs at you but a reckoning day is almost here, it arrives on different days depending on when a person's balls drop or when they get the courage to look seriously at what we are telling you is new evidence and proof absolute that has nothing to do with any of the Worthless Lying 4,199 Fake Religions who have lied so much and acted the fool and prostitute that they have caused the entire rational world to end up in the shoes of the Boy who cried wolf or vice versa, however you want to look at it. The Wolf is The Whore who sits on seven hills of Rome, she is real and owns you yet you don't even know she exists, just the way she likes it since she expends zero energy messing with you and all her energy trying to defeat Yahweh's plan which is going to subject her and her sons (the gods) to the authority and command of Mankind. To this end and to the very bitter end she is willing to take you because Misery wants you to die with her. If they were not sick with the Curse, I'd say they would sing praises to Father Yahweh all day long for the life they have, the food they eat and the jobs they have that give them great joy in doing. They were created for mankind and get enjoyment from helping him be fruitful. If only mankind cared so much about the little guys even smaller than the ants we would be a lot better off and healthier. I hope that answers your question, I tried to keep it as short as humanly possible but you must understand how many thousands and thousands of hours of knowledge you lack and how far behind the Called out ones you are. The Universities are the Schools of lower learning or Nimrod where Tyranny is taught and the truth is put into vacuum sealed jars of Formaldehyde and stored cryogenic ally in Deep Darkness. One day you will know this to be Pure Fact and then you will know how nice I actually was when speaking about them.
Peace
Sizzlean

Hammy Technoid - 2019-12-05

LOL.. my home lab can barely make waffles.....

Hammy Technoid - 2019-12-05

@Theodore Jackson Music by "The Germs"

Miles Duncan - 2020-01-11

I am 13. I made this in my garage. Its actually quite easy, as all you need is the actual chemicals, a metal kiln, and liquid nitrogen.

Cody'sLab - 2018-02-26

Humm why the citric acid ignition? Those nitrates all break down at temp into the oxides so simply heating I. The furnace should drive off the nitrogen. Also I want to see a wire made out of the stuff!

7cle - 2019-06-18

Maybe the papers from the team that builds cryostats for space telescopes/experiments would be interesting stuff that need to work 15 years in space orbiting L2 need to be reliable and therefore simple. A friend did a PhD in thermoacoustics for cryogeny and later chilled stuff at CERN. We could ask him.

Alejandro Castillo - 2019-08-18

It's an SHS-type combustion reaction (Self-propagating High-temperature Synthesis). The nitrate-citrate redox reaction is exothermic. This raises reaction temperatures well above initiation temperatures, favoring the formation of oxides over oxide-hydroxides or whatever. As well, it's been mentioned that the metal ions are complex by citrate, preventing flocculation

Zeus Kabob - 2019-10-19

​@Applied Science

You can make ceramic superconducting "wires", but because of how hard it is to work with and how low the critical current is even in large monolithic samples it turns out to be a terrible way to make a superconducting magnet. To my knowledge, there have been only ceramics shown to have superconducting properties at LN temperatures and standard pressure. All of the ceramics, due to their brittle crystalline structure, make poor magnet wire.

​ Cody, as far as using liquid hydrogen to cool superconducting magnet coils, be careful when charging the thing up. Quenches can be pretty violent, and the wire can spontaneously stop being superconductive when it reaches high current and magnetic field strength. The higher the temperature, the lower the critical field and current.

Philipverne jules - 2020-02-02

......late 1980s is when this formulation occurred. Schools everywhere were doing it. What we want to see today is graphene doped enhanced conductor ; a superconductor is a little too much to expect . Some composite with high percentage of graphene.

Philipverne jules - 2020-02-02

@Alexander Ambruso ...lead bismuth,, thankyou, I'll have a play with some type metal I have once the tool of old school printers.. Human being printers.

Practical Engineering - 2018-02-26

Never heard of flux pinning. This is so cool. Awesome project.

Pasha - 2019-06-21

Because there is a slight inaccuacy in calling it flux pinning.

In short: type 2 superconductor have 3 states :
*not superconducting and letting magnetic flux through.

*superconducting and exhibiting the meisner effect like type 1 superconductors

*"Abrikosov stage" where magnetic flux penetrates the superconductor, but around each penetration point there are created internal current vortecis which canel the feild that has penetrated.

Imagine a rectangular slab in external nagbetuc feild and narrow needles of this magnetic feild penetrare the slab, around each needle there are created internal current vortecies to cancel the magneric feild.

However pinning is thing that exists in superconductors. Imagine you pass currebt through a superconductor in this abrikosov stage - you will have Lorentz force acting on these vortecies, they would want to move however because of crystal defects and such they will be pinned in place and not move. Until you apply a string enough current to make these vortecies to creep, they will create EMF effectively acting as resistance.

Trump's Tiny Hands - 2019-06-21

It's a pretty common phrase used to help laypeople visualise what's going on. It tends to get bashed by pedants for being inaccurate, but it nevertheless remains a well-used and helpful phrase for non-physics students.

Aidan Kieffer - 2019-09-25

Pasha I thought flux pinning was a word for what you describe at the end...it seems you’ve described a lot well! but what’s your qualification?

Eliphas Leary - 2018-02-26

Ben, should you ever "get access to liquid Helium", please make a video documenting your evil laughter.

mind breaker - 2018-10-20

Mmmmmh. Liquid helium with pickle chasers.

The Metal Butcher - 2018-11-21

Just not with an iphone in pocket.

Air Command Rockets - 2018-02-26

A disturbance in the matrix at 8:18 :) Very informative video! Thanks for sharing

edstirling - 2018-05-27

the bacon moved.

George O'Connor - 2018-11-25

only thing that ever changes are our perceptions

874822 - 2019-01-27

Multidimensional beings tried to disrupt the experiment by stealing the compounds, but they realized a camera was running.

Neil Siebenthal - 2019-07-10

@874822 naw, hes just got magical powers

Gary McKinnon - 2019-07-31

ROFL Rockets :)

The Android Shepherd - 2018-02-26

Applied Science and This Old Tony in one day? This gonna be a good morning~!

Mat D - 2018-02-26

The hard part was deciding which to watch first.

z4nadeesh - 2018-02-28

I see you are a man of culture as well

Reno Simpson - 2018-05-22

And somthing to watch whilst on the turlit is AvE...

4x4Scout - 2018-12-04

@Reno Simpson LOL but not while children are present.

Justin Orwen - 2019-09-08

Put the ingredients in a ball mill.

Doświadczalski.pl - 2018-02-26

Great film. I spent a lot of time trying to make perfect YBCO and I'm just a halfway there. I have some observations:
1. K-type thermocouple is suitable for liquid nitrogen temp. Best results were obtained with cheap chinese module- error was within 10 deg. C. I also used Arduino with MAX31855 and MAX 31856. Adafruit library for MAX31855 seems to have some bugs or it's the IC itself- measured temperature of LN2 was only -138 deg. C. MAX31856 works fine.

2. I tried to show excluding magnetic field too, instead of filings I used compass needles as I saw on other YT channel- it didn't work and now I know why. Thanks for explanation.

3. I made Erbium analog od YBCO and it posesses very interesting property. It is highly paramagnetic (ferromagnetic?) at room temperature and is attracted to magnet. In LN2 however it's superconducting and repells magnet. It needs lower temperature than YBCO. This is the test:
https://youtu.be/4FZ3eFYO6yE?t=193

4. I tried pyrophoric method and found it very uneffective- large beaker for tiny amount of product. Shake and bake is more suitable for large scale production. There is no need to heat YBCO more than 2 times. It works even with single heating.
There are three stages: calcination, where substrates loose carbon dioxide and mixture becomes YBCO, sintering where strucrure is densified and annealing where crystal alttice is enriched with oxygen. This is POC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjuUMVm3hZ8 . It does not work well for YBCO but works better for EBCO.

5. Good grade of YBCO can be separated from lower grade by magnetic separation. Sand sized grains react to magnet after cooling inLN2 and you can "sweep" superconducting grains with strong magnet while non superconducting grains will stay in place.

6. It's really simple to make precise kiln controller with Arduino, MAX31855 and PID library. I made one and it can maintain temperature within a fraction of a degree C and cooling rate can be as low as 15 degree C/hour or less.

7. My tests of YBCO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe3jgUgd_Sg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64I_x71Yy64

Doświadczalski.pl - 2018-02-27

I struggle with myself because making video is much more effort than experimenting. I do a lot more experiments but I have only 1k viewers so I'm starting to see my vids pointless.
I'm not sure if I should have separate channels for polish and english version or keep it all together and just upload different versions of same materials? Subtitles may be not enough because polish language sounds like martian to foreginers.

Hugh C - 2018-02-27

Don't give up buddy!
I only just discovered your vids, and even though I don't speak the language I'm loving it!
See if you have the option of turning on auto-generated captions/subtitles - I've seen it on other youtube videos, and google's algorithms do a pretty good job of interpreting audio and translating it! I hope you keep going, I just subscribed!

Dawid Ziaja - 2018-02-27

Doświadczalski.pl If you enable community contributions I would be happy to add english subtitles to your videos.

Doświadczalski.pl - 2018-02-27

Thanks! Vids are ready to translate: http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_panel?tab=2&c=UC3LtRL7BObPZq_Gv3sZgwEg

Daniel Forrest - 2019-03-16

Hey I know that this comment is a year old but, I just watched one of your vids. Great job! Don't quit! I subscribed.

DannyBoyDDD - 2018-02-26

Pyrometric cones are temperature and time sensitive. E.g. a cone 10 cone can be melted at cone 9 temperatures with a longer exposure time.

WWG1WGA UK - 2018-12-24

Interesting

qez - 2018-02-26

well I should be going to bed but I guess I'm watching this now.

Антон Южаков - 2018-02-26

Ball mill would be helpful, i guess.

Martin L - 2018-02-26

tought the same!

Tuval Ben Dosa - 2018-02-26

wow, this is maybe the most inspirational channel ever.
im finishing my master degree in physics, and i am amazed by what you are able to do at home. i have a small lab at my apartment, but this!! i will aspire to have a garage like your in the future! step by step

Space Core - 2018-02-27

I'm sure you could use a ball mill to get those powders mixed really really well. And a few days in a ball mill will give you the most atomised powder ever, and at a very low cost. You could make one for a few dollars, with the materials you have lying around. I'd love to see that !

Mezuzah87 - 2018-03-05

Leonardo Ulian his accuracy is within a couple digits. The concern of a trace spec of dust or contamination is laughable at that point.

Leonardo Ulian - 2018-03-05

Mezuzah87 Again, scale digits have nothing to do with contamination. He is using pure reagents, maybe a slight change in the relative amounts but not contamination. Dust contamination is irrelevant in terms of grams. Ball milling contamination is critical, and putting considerable amounts of iron oxide into the milled material. If you have carried out your PhD in ball milling we can keep this discussion ahead.

Abdega - 2018-04-15

It’s doable, but you have to be really careful of one thing:
Make sure you have minimal contamination from your ball media
This is especially true if you are regrinding the ybco after calcining
If you use alumina balls, it is possible to contaminate the powders by over 2 weight%

pale blue dot - 2018-07-28

I made one out of a ice breaker tin and a little fan motor

pale blue dot - 2018-07-28

Leonardo Ulian make the jar and balls out if YBCO

Phase 1 crappy 1st stage production

Phase 2 maximize purity

Phase 3 maximize consistency

Nikolay Yakimov - 2018-02-26

We always called it YBaCuO on paper and "ibaquo" colloquially in my old physics lab. Fun stuff.

JuryDutySummons - 2018-02-26

That's awesome. You're adding to the body of science available on the internet!

Tom F - 2020-02-29

JuryDutySummons That stuff is old. We did that experiment at the uni 22 years ago.

Kyle Larsen - 2018-02-27

I'm looking forward to some carbon nanotube forests and/or graphene with that tube furnace! :)

Guat Agel - 2019-03-13

The lab that I used to work on, where I've made YBaCuO in the 90s, now is making nanotubes LEDs.

Willy Nebula - 2018-02-26

Man i love your channel!!!

DenkertM - 2018-02-27

Hey Ben, you should use a mirror to get the top views of chemical reactions. This would allow you to save your camera from harm.

neutronstorm - 2018-02-26

We made one of these superconductors is physics class when i was in high school in the 80s. We used the mixing chemical method, not the pyro method and after a few tries we got one to work. I remember that the quantity of the chemicals had to be exact and mixed perfectly. We built a computer controlled kiln where a computer program monitored the output of the thermocouple that was placed near the sample. The computer just switched on and off the mains power to the kiln to allow for a perfect programmed temperature profile. The software took into account the thermal interia of the kiln and switch the power in such a way as the temperature drop was very gradule. From memory, we did the bake at one temp, drop to another and hold and then it reduced the temp right down to room temp at a gradual rate over a day or two. Your experiment really brings back some memories.

psycronizer - 2018-04-04

I have to agree with that....what was the school ? that teacher was clearly ahead of the scholastic program !!

Dave Luxton - 2018-10-30

we made YBCO in material science class in 1994. my memory is a little fuzzy, but there was a fume hood and lots of acid involved.

Guat Agel - 2019-03-13

@aleksander suur YBCO is so easy to make, and liquid nitrogen is so easy to obtain, that everybody jumped into superconductor materials. Yes, small laboratories from small schools and colleges around the world were able to make and play with working YBCO pills.

Hsianghsi Kung - 2019-06-23

@aleksander suur Indeed YBCO was first synthesized in 1987, however it was never awarded Nobel Prize (just a few month too late I guess). It was LBCO (a similar compound that inspired Paul and MK to look for YBCO) that was awarded the 1987 Nobel.

aleksander suur - 2019-06-23

@Hsianghsi Kung ah, I see you are right, that was indeed the case, thank you for the correction.

mausball - 2018-02-26

I made 1/2/3 superconductors in high school chemistry. Fun times. Formed in a press, fired in a kiln, and frozen with LN2. Guidance to my teacher from Fermi. One of the best classes I had.

NightHawkInLight - 2018-02-28

Awesome process! I have to try this one. Thanks for going through the troubleshooting for the rest of us, I know I'm not the only one to find this useful

WWG1WGA UK - 2018-12-24

Good to see you here Sir.

Drakkar Calethiel - 2018-02-26

Great to see another video. And the great thing is it is about a topic which really interests me since I've heard about it!

Wobblycogs Workshop - 2018-02-26

This takes me back, I spent a long year making variations on a theme of YBCO (everyone I worked with called it "ibco" btw). For attaching wires we used a platinum ink to stick on tiny pieces of platinum foil. Both were as expensive as you'd expect but a tiny bottle of ink lasted for hundreds of samples. You just paint a little ink on the sample, touch the platinum foil to it and then bake it in the furnace. I seem to recall the ink is platinum on carbon so the carbon burns away and the platinum sinters to the sample. I will say I was using this for high temperature experiments but I'm pretty sure it would work at low temperatures too. IIRC the methodology we used correctly you are cooking it way more than you need to. We'd just mix together stoichiometric amounts of material and chuck it in the furnace over night at about 1150 C - or lower than any of the components melting temperatures. The mixing process was grinding in a mortar and pestle then stamp it into disc using a 15 ton press. If you've got any questions I'm happy to try and remember what we used to do.

Joey Bushagour - 2018-02-26

Great video as always Ben! You are without a doubt the most consistently amazing content creator on YouTube right now! Keep it up

RasTafadzwa Chinhoyi - 2018-08-16

Joey Bushagour kll1

Abdega - 2018-04-14

I’m actually doing this as part of my PhD research!
:D

Ian Gallinger - 2018-02-26

can u stop being so dope?? its not fair for the rest of us

vizionthing - 2018-03-23

no. don't let the rest of us drag anyone this good down!

Austin Hayducky - 2018-08-14

Famous YouTuber: makes comment
Everyone: OH MY GOD IT'S (famous youtuber) I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS SO MUCH!11!!!!1!!
Me: You watch this guy too, cool.

JJ Baker - 2019-03-31

The self-ignition high speed looks like the scourge from mass effect andromeda.

dario dal cin - 2019-03-05

13:10 is that lil-screwy?

Cedric Proper - 2019-03-22

I was wondering about something. You got the YBC reaction to work in a solution (very cool, BTW). Why not take the dried YBC, grind it up and add it to some reagent grade Hydrogen Peroxide, rather than oxygenating it in a kiln? Wouldn't this give you a more complete reaction? Your lab is awesome, brother.

Christopher Berg Smiet - 2018-02-27

Judging from the video, your shake and bake SC might not have failed! The superconductor seems to repel the magnet, consistent with Meissner repulsion.

On a science show I was part of, we demonstrated a commercial grade YBCO slab, and the trick is to lower the SC below it's transition temperature with the magnet close by, separated by a paper spacer. This way the flux channels penetrate all the way through the superconductor, but are pinned on the crystal defects.

Flux pinning where you set the magnet, and it stays there only works for very thin or very bad superconductors. The thin ones because the field can easily completely destroy the superconductivity in the flux channels since they aren't very long, and the bad superconductors since there is enough non-superconducting junk that the field can pass through so it doesn't need to create long channels.

DANIEL NORMAN - 2019-08-11

Believe it or not a coffee grinder will do an excellent job of mixing these Ingredients, you just need to shake it several minutes while it's running. But be careful when you open it. There will be A powdered dust that will become airborne.

Don't Look At My Profile. - 2020-01-06

Using Superconductor On Saucer.

Gravity: Am I a joke to you?

Phoenix AF - 2018-02-26

4:36 Why isn't it possible? If you blow on liquid nitrogen doesn't it get colder?

KarlBunker - 2018-02-26

I think it's because the nitrogen is boiling throughout the experiment. Just like boiling water (at normal pressure) can't be hotter or colder than 100°C. If it was colder it wouldn't be boiling.

Antoine Roquentin - 2018-02-26

I wonder if it's possible to build a loop transmit antenna out of superconductor. When the loop is small compared to wavelength (for long/medium/shortwave) the problem is that they have a very low impedance, so that they basically lose a big portion of the transmit power to resistive losses. In practice it is impossible to build a small, yet efficient long/medium/shortwave transmit antenna. Could this be changed using superconductors?

ATMyller - 2018-02-26

We use the shake and bake method in adv. student labs. 20 mins of grinding and two bakes makes working superconductors 95% of time.

Atlas WalkedAway - 2018-02-26

Can't you just ball mill the mixture for a few days to make sure everything is thoroughly mixed?

electronicsNmore - 2018-02-27

Highly informative as usual. :-)

Eric Carson - 2018-02-27

I'm so happy to see content from your channel! Please keep living my dream!

Wankel Motor - 2018-02-26

"Shake and bake". A popular method for making superconductors, or meth...

Mandrake Fernflower - 2019-12-23

Also the nickname of a really nasty antifungal drug called amphotericin

Torjus Bones - 2020-02-12

true 😅👌

TheTsunamijuan - 2018-02-26

You always make the coolest stuff. I love that you take time to share your curiosity and pursuits on youtube.

catoleg - 2019-06-19

I just realized who you remind me of. Your lab and experiments are like straight from the Rick and Morty animation.

Antoine Billiard - 2018-02-26

It would definitely be cool if the making of that vacuum tube furnace had it's own video.

Hobo Sullivan - 2019-10-12

11:17 I feel like I'm going to see that in a nightmare someday. Worth it.

Arturo Hernandez - 2019-09-05

Very impressive just the huge range of knowledge required to do these experiments. Hats off, and please keep doing them.

apbosh1 - 2018-03-05

i want to make YMCA in my shed. Amazing work. Great video.

WWG1WGA UK - 2018-12-24

Yes, put that sign above your shed. See what happens. LOL

Armastat - 2019-09-02

I really like that venting system u showed. One question tho, I am curious how u explained all the dead birds to the neighbors? lol

P8qzxnxfP85xZ2H3wDRV - 2019-07-06

So after you reach the climax temperature, the pyrometric cone becomes limp ...

Liam Swick - 2018-02-26

4:40 why are the data points in pairs? Is it low and high? Love your videos keep it up.

Mohammed Ghadiyali - 2018-02-26

Next exfoliation of graphene and mos2, then visualising them under SEM

Kerry Wong - 2018-02-27

Thanks for your effort put in this video! I enjoy your work a lot. A good video in a long while is totally worth the wait!

John Butterfield - 2018-02-28

Ben, this blows my mind on so many levels! I'm in such awe of your projects! Keep it coming, I can't wait to see what's next!