When looking at the intersection of cold fusion with HTSC - high temperature superconductivity - the paper below from India offers a possible and surprising connection which goes back to the often mentioned detail from the early P&F experiments. The most success was had using the palladium silver alloy as the cathode of a special type known as Johnson & Matthey Type A, which was ~23% silver and ”prepared in a special way.” Can palladium be a substitute for gold so as to create ambient superconductivity?
We all are aware the palladium hydride is superconductive but NOT at anything close to ambient conditions. So the palladium-hydride is NOT going to be effective unless cryogenic conditions are maintained. Before the paper below, no one suspected that it is not the palladium but the silver which can carry massive amounts of current locally - and with the accompanying magnetic field. In short, given the findings of Thapa et al. it is now possible to see how superconductivity could be coming from the silver, not the palladium. It is possible that the “special way” to prepare this Type A alloy (said to involve ammonia but that is a trade secret) has the end result of keeping the silver in nanoparticles instead of a true alloy. The cathode would then consist of a matrix of palladium hydride interspersed with superconductive nanoparticles of silver which could have enormous field strength. If so, then that surprising detail answers many questions about old results - especially in the lack of reproducibility. Even P&F in their very best efforts in France saw success in only 2 out of 7 almost identical experiments. No we may know why. It is possibly that success demands superconductivity in the cathode (possibly for magnetic effects – e.g. “nanomagnetism” which is only possible if the silver nanoparticles in the palladium do NOT alloy but maintain their nano-geometry. If the silver does alloy the cathode becomes useless for LENR. (that is the hypothesis). If one did not know this, then they would not have a clue on how to reactivate the HTSC or at least replace the spent cathode with a new one. Jones https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.08572 “Evidence for Superconductivity at Ambient Temperature and Pressure in Nanostructures” Dev Kumar Thapa, Anshu Pandey (Submitted on 23 Jul 2018) India Institute of Science. Specifically the authors who appear to be relatively unknown, found the HTSC and Meissner effect in silver nanoparticles embedded in a gold matrix. However, it seems clear that they expect more depth to the discovery than only gold and silver - and hopefully other less expensive combinations may turn up. They started with a view towards discovering “non-phonon based electron pairing mechanisms” – IOW plasmonic. Au and Ag are of course expensive precious metals with excellent normal conductivity, both thermal and electric, and notably both have low electron-phonon coupling and are not known to exhibit a superconducting state independently. Is that basic set of parameters the start of a formula which leads to other pairs such as zinc and cadmium or nickel and palladium? If there is broader applicability to other related pairs of transition metals, and of course if this finding is easily and quickly replicated – then it likely could be the start of an international race… which is reminiscent of the discovery of HTSC in copper oxides in 1986 by IBM researchers Bednorz and Muller, who were awarded the 1987 Nobel… and which scenario could happen again here if this is real. Of course, the IBM discovery failed to live up to the early hype.
