GITAM, Department of Engineering Physics
The Discovery of Superconductivity
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H.
Kamerlingh Onnes, after having successfully liquefied helium in 1908,
investigated the low temperature resistivity of mercury in 1911. The
mercury could be made very pure by distillation, and this was important
because the resistivity at low temperatures tends to be dominated by
impurity effects. He found that the resistivity suddenly dropped to zero
at 4.2K, a phase transition to a zero resistance state. This phenomenon
was called superconductivity, and the temperature at which it occurred is
called its critical temperature. |
