In new research, scientists explain how one mineral found in nature is more than just a typical superconductor. Miassite is a gray, metallic mineral made of rhodium and sulfur and, as Science Alert explains, was identified as a regular superconductor in 2010. But now, miassite has passed a variety of odd-seeming tests that show it’s also an “unconventional” superconductor—joining a small group that, so far, has only included laboratory-conceived materials. That research appears now in the journal Communications Materials, and to understand what it all means, we first need to understand the conventional superconductors.
But, as the new paper explains, all of these materials “are products of synthetic solid-state chemistry and are not found in nature. Our work establishes Rh17S15 as a unique member of the unconventional superconductors, being the only example that occurs as a natural mineral.” Rhodium is “a fragile superconductor” on its own and in a number of lab-made compounds. Sulfur, too, is found in superconductive hydrogen sulfide—a gas that would never be found in solid mineral form in nature, unless that nature is deep inside of Uranus.
Miassite is the first naturally occurring mineral to show unconventional superconductivity, but the researchers explain that it joins an interesting natural superconductive category: covellite, certain meteorites, parkerite, palladseite, and miassite itself are all traditional superconductors made in the lab that have naturally occurring analogs. This paper explores miassite’s unconventional qualities in addition to its conventional ones—talk about an overachiever.