Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory
(Clockwise from left) Brookhaven Lab physicists Ivan Bozovic, Anthony Bollinger, and Jie Wu, and postdoctoral researcher Xi He with the atomic layer-by-layer molecular beam epitaxy system used to synthesize more than 2,500 thin films of a copper-oxide compound called LSCO. The team studied LSCO to understand why it can become superconducting at a much higher temperature than the ultra-chilled temperatures required by conventional superconductors.