LK99 Superconductor August 7, 2023 Status Report

Seoul Economic Daily reports the Quantum Energy Research Institute, the original LK99 developer, has verified samples made by foreign researchers and will make an announcement around the end of August or beginning of Septemeber, 2023.

The Seoul Economic Daily reports speculation that the Quantum Energy Research Institute will officially announce the results of the thesis review of the international academic journal ‘APL Materials’, which is currently undergoing the registration process, at the end of this month at the comprehensive announcement.

An official from the scientific community explained, “The surest way to secure the reliability of a sample is to receive it directly from the development team. If not, as a second best solution, it can be independently produced and then verified by the development team or a third party.”

The Q-Center (The company name of Sukbae Lee/Ji-Hoon Kim) says they are going to make an announcement at the end of the month or early next month regarding the LK-99 superconductor, likely to be the results of their peer review submission to APL materials.

Seoul Economic Daily…

— Floates0x (@floates0x) August 7, 2023

The Condensed Matter Theory Center tweets out the observations that there is no quality confirmation of the original LK99 research paper. The tests on attempted replication samples have not yet shown well defined critical temperatures or zero resistance states.

Nextbigfuture notes that if this is a new type of superconductor then it could have different behaviors and we have not replicated pure and high quality samples of LK99 class materials.

There is theoretical and simulation work from top national labs that lend support to LK99 being possibly viable. There are many partial replications and some measurements consistent with superconductivity. The theory work indicates that synthesis of pure samples will likely be very hard. The original team reported only 10% of their own samples worked in any way.

Now bad: (1) no confirmation of the OP at all, ‘making the material’ (light yellow on the wiki) is meaningless since we have no idea what material is coming out; (2) levitation claims are often hoax; (3) well-defined T_c and true zero resistance state (or Meissner) absent so far

— Condensed Matter Theory Center (@condensed_the) August 7, 2023

Additional comments: (1)weak diamagnetism could arise from small grains of Pb/Cu/P in the sample, all of them are diamagnetic; (2)weak ferromagnetism may arise if razor blades are used to cut the material at any stage (this has happened in professional labs in other contexts)

— Condensed Matter Theory Center (@condensed_the) August 7, 2023

Type of Superconductors

The new LK99 material has superconducting pathways that might be are one-dimensional or the initial production is too impure for full three dimensional levitation and superconduction.

Proposed mechanisms for LK99 superconductivity


Partial replacement of Pb2+ ions (measuring 133 picometres) with Cu2+ ions (measuring 87 picometres) is said to cause a 0.48% reduction in volume, creating internal stress inside the material]:   The internal stress is claimed to cause a heterojunction quantum well between the Pb(1) and oxygen within the phosphate ([PO4]3−) generating a superconducting quantum well (SQW).

There are proposed theories that LK-99 is a Mott or charge transfer insulator, that electron or hole doping is needed to make it (super)conducting.

Type-II Superconductor

In superconductivity, a type-II superconductor is a superconductor that exhibits an intermediate phase of mixed ordinary and superconducting properties at intermediate temperature and fields above the superconducting phases. It also features the formation of magnetic field vortices with an applied external magnetic field. This occurs above a certain critical field strength Hc1. The vortex density increases with increasing field strength. At a higher critical field Hc2, superconductivity is destroyed. Type-II superconductors do not exhibit a complete Meissner effect.

Type-II superconductors are usually made of metal alloys or complex oxide ceramics. All high temperature superconductors are type-II superconductors. While most elemental superconductors are type-I, niobium, vanadium, and technetium are elemental type-II superconductors. Boron-doped diamond and silicon are also type-II superconductors. Metal alloy superconductors can also exhibit type-II behavior (e.g. niobium-titanium, one of the most common superconductors in applied superconductivity), as well as intermetallic compounds like niobium-tin.

Other type-II examples are the cuprate-perovskite ceramic materials which have achieved the highest superconducting critical temperatures. These include La1.85Ba0.15CuO4, BSCCO, and YBCO (Yttrium-Barium-Copper-Oxide), which is famous as the first material to achieve superconductivity above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K). Due to strong vortex pinning, the cuprates are close to ideally hard superconductors.

(1) Type – I Superconductors: Low Temperature Superconductors.


(2) Type – II Superconductors: High Temperature Superconductors.

Type-1.5 superconductors are multicomponent superconductors characterized by two or more coherence lengths, at least one of which is shorter than the magnetic field penetration length and at least one of which is longer.

Unconventional Superconductors Like Graphene

Unconventional superconductors are materials that display superconductivity which does not conform to either the conventional BCS theory or Nikolay Bogolyubov’s theory or its extensions.