Another Iron in the Fire

Physicist's excitement over the discovery of copper oxide, or cuprate, high temperature superconductors in 1986 is remarkable.A session on the cuprates at an American physical society conference in early 1987 was dubbed the "Woodstock of Physics" after 1000s of researchers overflowed the room and presentations continued past 3 a.m.
But after that frenzied beginning, work to understand cuprates' properties turned out to be long, frustrating slog.
Over 2 decades experimenters marshaled a veritable arsenal of techniques to investigate the materials, including neutron scattering, electron spectroscopy and scanning superconducting quantum interference device microscopy. Yet the puzzle of what physical process produced the high-temperature superconductivity remained unsolved.
Thus, the iron pnictides rekindled the old excitement when they appeared on the scene, with transition temperatures second only to those of cuprates and with somewhat similar structures.Physicists are rapidly recapitulating 20 years of cuprate experiments on the iron materials, hoping to see vital clues in the similarities and differences of the two compounds. A solution to this mystery could open the doors to room temperature superconductors which would transform technology to UNIMAGINED ways


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