Source: Gelonghui
Author: Mo Mian

It's only been almost 2 months since the last “news” from the “wolf.” Let's look at it specifically:

On the 29th, over the weekend, media reported that quantum physicists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands proved for the first time that it is possible to control and manipulate spin waves on chips using superconductors. These tiny waves in magnets may provide an alternative to electronics in the future. The above findings show that superconducting electrodes can be used to construct countless new energy-saving spin-wave circuits, and that circuits based on spin waves and superconductors hardly generate heat or sound waves, and can be used as circuits for connecting devices in mobile phones and quantum computers.

On the 28th, Bilibili announced “Bilibili's Top Five Scientific Highlights for 2023” — selected cutting-edge scientific topics that have attracted the attention of young people, such as AIGC, room temperature superconductivity, brain-computer interfaces, black holes, and controllable nuclear fusion.

Then, on the 31st, “Hefei Daily” reported that recently, Chen Wenge's research group at the Strong Magnetic Field Center of the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences collaborated with Ma Yanwei's research group at the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to achieve an important breakthrough in practical research on iron-based superconductivity and successfully developed the world's first Tesla (T) class iron-based superconducting high-field in-field coil.

“Here Comes the Wolf” many times

From the beginning of the year until now, the term room temperature superconductivity has not only stunned ordinary people time and time again, but has also caused physicists around the world to work overtime to recreate it.This story, like “Here Comes the Wolf,” led to the fourth industrial revolution for a while, and the experimental results were questionable for a while.

First, at the beginning of the year, an American university team described room temperature superconductivity, then at the beginning of August, from South Korea's discovery of room temperature superconducting LK-99, to a user called “Guanshankou Male Engineer” who posted a “LK-9 Verification” video with nearly 10 million views last week. Then, at the end of August, papers from scientific research institutions such as the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were published, and “room temperature superconductivity” was reversed many times.

Superconducting concept stocks also became the focus of the market along with the hype in the news, but basically they soon fell silent again.

Looking back at history, we can actually find that the repeated hype about the concept of superconductivity was just like the hype about graphene back then. The market where it appeared at the time also portrayed how it would disrupt human society. As a result, it has been a year since the capital market made what it should have earned, and lost what it should have lost, but now graphene is still far from being produced and entering the market.

You need to know that the capital market searches for and hype up concepts in years, and major breakthroughs in the field of science and technology are measured in ten years.The world's capital markets are eagerly awaiting technology to provide it with concepts, and it will take at least ten years for science and technology itself to complete a breakthrough.

So why did the concept hype end up falling from “heaven”? Because that will take another ten years; the secondary market will be over in a year.

The current industrial chain market pattern

From the perspective of the superconducting industry chain, the development of downstream products requires more time, capital, and talent investment, and technical barriers are also relatively high. As a result, preemptive firms can establish higher patent barriers to ensure their leading position in the industry.

Some organizations said that superconducting magnets have now entered a large-scale release period in various downstream application fields, and the industry has reached an inflection point of upward acceleration.

Galaxy Securities pointed out that the superconducting industry has the characteristics of long slopes and heavy snow. Among them, the midstream bar and wire link in the low-temperature superconducting industry chain has high technical barriers, and the direction of expansion of downstream application scenarios is also very important. Companies such as Dongfang Tantalum and Jiuli Special Materials are already expanding in this field.

The continuous progress and accelerated cost reduction of high-temperature superconductivity technology, and the expansion of further industrialization, mainly participating manufacturers include Yongding Co., Ltd., Baili Electric, Jinbei Electric, Baosheng Co., Ltd., Lianchuang Optoelectronics, and Wall Nuclear Materials. In terms of the direction of room temperature superconducting material systems, Yuguang Gold Lead and China Gold Lingnan are the main manufacturers.

Currently, many listed companies in the A-share market have established the superconducting materials industry, and the development of superconducting technology in China is also at the forefront of the industry. According to the data, China is the world's largest source of superconducting technology, accounting for 82.83% of the total number of global superconducting patent applications.

Zhao Zhongxian, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and former director of the State Key Laboratory of Superconductors, explained that domestic superconductor technology has already been applied in the fields of energy, health, and information. It pointed out that continuously raising the critical temperature of superconductors and exploring superconductor materials and new processes that are more suitable for application will bring profound changes to human production and life.

editor/tolk