Korea University in Seoul has opened an investigation into research professor Young-Wan Kwon, who is accused of uploading a paper on the alleged world's first room-temperature superconductor, LK-99, without the consent of his co-authors.
The paper's release caused a stir in global markets, with investors speculating on its potential to transform electronics and reduce fossil fuel reliance.
Kwon reportedly uploaded the pre-publication paper to Cornell University’s arXiv server on July 22 without undergoing peer review.
Co-authors listed included Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim.
A second paper, excluding Kwon but featuring Lee, Kim, and four others, appeared on the same site shortly after.
Kim Hyun Tak, an author of the second paper and a research professor at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, revealed that the swift upload was in response to Kwon's unauthorised sharing.
Both papers claim that researchers have developed a new material that can conduct electricity without any resistance at room temperature and doesn't require any special conditions like high pressure.
The cited ramifications for such a breakthrough have bordered on the fantastical, with predictions of floating trains and a “utopian future where no health condition goes undiagnosed”.
More feasible applications for a true room-temperature semiconductor are faster computers, better phone batteries, and more efficient nuclear fusion plants.
Though pitched as a significant breakthrough in the field of superconductivity, the claims have been highly disputed, if not outright debunked.
LK-99 'isn't a superconductor'
This Wednesday, the respected journal nature unambiguously concluded that LK-99 isn’t a superconductor.
According to nature: “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.
“Instead, studies have shown 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.”
Inna Vishik, a condensed-matter experimentalist at the University of California, Davis, said: “I think things are pretty decisively settled at this point.”
Further scepticism arose from the University of Maryland's Condensed Matter Theory Center, which dismissed LK-99's superconducting claims.
The Korean Society of Superconductivity and Cryogenics also voiced concerns over the lack of academic review and the claim's broader impacts.