Magnetization and resistance measurements were carried out on carbon-based multiwall nanotubes. Both magnetization and resistance data can be consistently explained in terms of bulk superconductivity above 400 K although we cannot completely rule out other possible explanations to the data.
Recent experimental and theoretical results on intrinsic superconductivity in ropes of single-wall carbon nanotubes are reviewed and compared. We find strong experimental evidence for superconductivity when the distance between the normal electrodes is large enough. This indicates the presence of attractive phonon-mediated interactions in carbon nanotubes, which can even overcome the repulsive Coulomb interactions. The effective low-energy theory of rope superconductivity explains the experimental results on the temperature-dependent resistance below the transition temperature in terms of quantum phase slips. Quantitative agreement with only one fit parameter can be obtained. Nanotube ropes thus represent superconductors in an extreme 1D limit never explored before.
The calcium superhydrides are synthesized at high pressure of 180 GPa and 1000 degree high temperatures. Superconductivity with Tc onset about 210 K is realized in thus obtained hydrogen rich calcium compounds at high pressure. The critical magnetic field Hc2(T) is estimated to around 166 T in the Ginzburg Landau model.
We show that non-damped acoustic plasmons exist in single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and propose that the non-damped acoustic plasmons may mediate electron-electron attraction and result in superconductivity in the SWCNT. The superconducting transition temperature Tc for the SWCNT (3,3) obtained by this mechanism agrees with the recent experimental result (Z. K. Tang et al, Science 292, 2462(2001)). We also show that it is possible to get higher Tc up to 99 K by doping the SWCNT (5,5).
We report that entirely end-bonded multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) can show superconductivity with the transition temperature Tc as high as 12K that is approximately 40-times larger than those reported in ropes of single-walled nanotubes. We find that emergence of this superconductivity is very sensitive to junction structures of Au electrode/MWNTs. This reveals that only MWNTs with optimal numbers of electrically activated shells, which are realized by the end-bonding, can allow the superconductivity due to inter shell effects.
We show that carbon nanotubes (CNT) are good candidates for realizing one-dimensional topological superconductivity with Majorana fermions localized near the end points. The physics behind topological superconductivity in CNT is novel and is mediated by a recently reported curvature-induced spin-orbit coupling which itself has a topological origin. In addition to the spin-orbit coupling, an important new requirement for a robust topological state is broken chirality symmetry about the nanotube axis. We use topological arguments to show that, for recently realized strengths of spin-orbit coupling and broken chirality symmetry, a robust topological gap of around 500 mK is achievable in carbon nanotubes.