2023/08/10 by Gohil S. Thakur, Thakur, Gohil S., Manuel Schulze +3
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Solid-state spectroscopy and crystallography #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2308.05776
openalex publication_date 2023/08/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present the results of our various attempts to prepare the presumably room-temperature and ambient-pressure superconducting compound Pb9Cu(PO4)6O (LK-99). We experimented with various starting materials, and used several synthesis techniques like, sealed quartz tubes and air-sintering pathways to prepare the reported phase. Repetition of the exact synthesis process followed by Lee et al failed to reproduce the superconducting phase yielding only a multiphase sample. None of our prepared samples exhibits Meissner effect or Levitation. Very importantly, no copper (or only a trace amount) could be detected in any of the designated LK-99 phase with PXRD pattern identical to the reported one. Additionally, some dark greyish flakes in some samples responded towards the magnet in a way imitating half-levitation. The magnetic measurement on those sample suggest it is diamagnetic in the measured temperature range of 2-325 K but show a weak soft ferromagnetic behavior at 2 K, the origin of which is still unknown to us.