Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductivity

The pursuit of a material that superconducts (zero electrical resistance) at both room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure -- the combination that would make superconductivity practical for power transmission, MRI, and maglev at scale. No verified, reproducible ambient-pressure room-temperature superconductor exists as of 2026: the 2023 LK-99 claim was decisively debunked (a 2025 Chemistry of Materials rebuttal concluded it is a semiconductor with interesting magnetic properties, not a superconductor at any temperature), and Ranga Dias's 2020/2023 high-pressure claims were separately retracted for data issues. The highest independently verified ambient-pressure critical temperature remains ~135K (cuprate superconductors, discovered 1986); the highest verified critical temperature at any pressure is ~260K (LaH10 at 170-190 GPa). Anchored at Drozdov et al.'s 2015 discovery of 203K superconductivity in sulfur hydride under high pressure (Nature 525, 73) -- not the first room-temperature-superconductivity aspiration (that dates to the BCS-theory era of the 1960s-80s, with real if thin literature throughout), but the first unambiguous, unretracted proof that conventional (BCS-mechanism) superconductivity can reach near-room temperatures in any material, which reignited the modern high-pressure-hydride research program this pursuit now sits within.