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A depiction of the Meissner effect, in which a superconductor at the proper temperature expels a magnetic field. (Getty Images Bank)

The prestigious academic journal Nature reported Wednesday that LK-99, a compound developed by a team of South Korean researchers, is not a superconductor at room temperature and ambient pressure.

“Now, after dozens of replication efforts, many experts are confidently saying that the evidence shows LK-99 is not a room-temperature superconductor,” Nature said in an article published on its website on Wednesday.

Nature reported that researchers from China, the US and Europe had “combined experimental and theoretical evidence to demonstrate how LK-99’s structure made superconductivity infeasible” and confirmed that “it is not a superconductor, but an insulator.”

The journal said that attempts by researchers around the world to replicate the purported properties of LK-99 had found “that impurities in the material — in particular, copper sulfide — were responsible for the sharp drops in electrical resistivity and partial levitation over a magnet, which looked similar to properties exhibited by superconductors.”

Crystals of LK-99 synthesized by the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. (courtesy of Nature)

When a research team at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany successfully synthesized single crystals of LK-99 without impurities on Aug. 14, they concluded that “LK-99 is not a superconductor, but an insulator with a resistance in the millions of ohms.”

“The conclusion dashes hopes that LK-99 — a compound of copper, lead, phosphorus and oxygen — marked the discovery of the first superconductor that works at room temperature and ambient pressure,” Nature wrote.

By Kim Jeong-su, senior staff writer

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