China built a ‘super -laboratory’ of material research

Material can create strange phenomena when exposed to extreme conditions such as extremely low temperatures of the universe, the magnetic field hundreds of thousands of times stronger than the earth or the pressure is close to the pressure level in the planet core. For example, the superconducting phenomenon – the resistance disappears – only occurs at extremely low temperatures. In addition, some normal materials can be transformed into superconducting materials under high pressure.

The studies of extreme coordination conditions (SECUF) in Hoai Nhu district, the suburbs of Beijing, are helping scientists observe such strange phenomena of matter. SECUF was started in September 2017 and passed the national acceptance assessment on February 26, marking the completion of this advanced experiment. The facility can simulate many harsh conditions such as extremely low temperatures, extremely high pressure, strong magnetic fields and super fast optical fields.

SECUF was managed by the Institute of Physics (IOP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), acting as a “super laboratory” to explore the boundaries of material science. Here, scientists can learn the mysteries of matter and detect new phenomena or rules that cannot be observed in normal conditions.

SECUF can cool the material to the extremely low temperature of 1 millkelvin (MK), 1,000 times lower than the space temperature. Meanwhile, the absolute 0 is 0 kelvin (k) – the lowest temperature in theory.

According to LV Li, the leading scientist of SECUF, the laboratory is capable of creating a 30 Tesla stable magnetic field, is 600,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field, and the pressure is up to 300 GPA, is almost equivalent to the pressure at the Earth’s core. The facility can also create extremely fast laser pulses that extend 100 atto seconds (1 Atto second is 1 billion seconds) to capture the motivation to learn electron in real time.

Thanks to SECUF, scientists can detect more superconducting materials under high pressure, even superconducting materials at room temperature, which is very useful in improving the processing speed of the computer. The strong magnetic field and super -fast lighting field also allows them to further study the microscopic structure and dynamics of the material.

LV said that these harsh conditions can be coordinated depending on the needs of research at the Secuf, allowing advanced experiments to synthesize materials, quantum control and super -fast dynamics, providing unprecedented experimental platforms for many fields such as material, physical and chemical science.

SECUF helps to significantly improve China’s research capacity. This facility also opened the door for international scientists. Up to now, 13 universities and research institutes from 10 countries, including Denmark, Germany, France, Japan, have conducted experiments here.