Physicist uses intuition, supercomputers to identify new high-temperature superconductor

In 2021, scientists discovered a new form of superconducting nickelate using computational methods. The discovery lets researchers explore similarities and differences between nickelates and cuprates — promising copper-based materials — and among nickelates. Both families of materials appear to display ‘super-exchange,’ where the material trades electrons in copper or nickel atoms through a pathway that contains oxygen, rather than directly. This, researchers believe, may be one of the factors that governs superconductivity.