Cuprate superconductor

The critical temperature for this material was 35K, well above the previous record of 23 K.[1] The discovery led to a sharp increase in research on the cuprates, resulting in thousands of publications between 1986 and 2001.

Superconductivity takes place within the copper-oxide (CuO2) sheets, with only weak coupling between adjacent CuO2 planes, making the properties close to that of a two-dimensional material.

There are several families of cuprate superconductors which can be categorized by the elements they contain and the number of adjacent copper-oxide layers in each superconducting block.

The undoped "parent" or "mother" compounds are Mott insulators with long-range antiferromagnetic order at sufficiently low temperatures.

The weak isotope effects observed for most cuprates contrast with conventional superconductors that are well described by BCS theory.

A 2022 study found that the varying density of actual Cooper pairs in a bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide superconductor matched with numerical predictions based on superexchange.

Superconductor timeline. Cuprates are displayed as blue diamonds, magnesium diboride and other BCS superconductors are displayed as green circles, and iron-based superconductors as yellow squares. Cuprates are currently the highest temperature superconductors which are suitable for wires and magnets.
The unit cell of high-temperature cuprate superconductor BSCCO-2212
Schematic doping phase diagram of cuprate high-temperature superconductors