The news that researchers at Bell Labs (www.bell-labs.com) – a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, New Jersey / USA; www.lucent.com) – have succeeded in manufacturing a superconducting plastic can safely be regarded as a scientific sensation with the potential to bring about major changes in the way we handle and supply energy.

Superconductors are materials that permit the resistance- free conduction of electric current below a certain temperature. This means that current can essentially be transported over any distance without loss, enabling the establishment of worldwide networks. Solar energy thus could be captured in areas with plenty of sunshine and, with an extremely high level of efficiency, conveyed to areas with little sun. At present, considerations of this kind fail due to cost or for technical reasons. The processes either require cooling to the temperature of liquid helium or the use of materials based on inflexible ceramics.

Scientists at Bell Labs, which employs 30,000 in research worldwide, use polythiopene as the starting material. Used in optoelectronic components and smart pixels, polythiopene is an aromatic with a sulphur component and is conductive at room temperature. Bell´s researchers have succeeded in converting the random molecular structure of the material into a highly ordered, parallel structure.

Polythiopene treated in this way is superconductive at minus 235 degrees Celsius. The developers are confident that they will be able to raise this extremely low temperature with further molecular manipulations, which are feasible thanks to the organic structure of the polymer. Initial fields of application for this material, which is extremely cheap compared with conventional superconductors, are seen in so-called quantum computers and in superconducting electronics.