Scientists at the Bell Communications Research co-operative of the US regional phone companies reckon they have made a significant advance toward the application of superconducting materials to high-speed semiconductor fabrication with a new process that optimises superconducting properties of newly discovered ceramics by restoring oxygen at temperatures tolerable to microelectronic devices: Bellcore filed a patent application for the process earlier this week at the US Patent Office in Washington after discovering that superconductors could lose oxygen – and with it their superconductivity – during certain processes normally used in chip manufacture; the solution is to expose the superconducting material, near room temperature, to a plasma (an ionized gas) of oxygen.
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