To become more familiar, I am putting together a "crash course" from a materials science perspective on superconducting materials. It's a work in progress and far from complete. I am primarily jotting down notes from reading a few good books, such as the introductory book by Speller. It's a straightforward read and will get you started.
Warning
These are working notes, so there are bound to be errors and missing content.
Once I am done with my notes, I likely won't follow up on this subject unless there is compelling interest. One small reason for this is that, upon reading various sources, I became bothered by the "hand-wavy" approach to describing the physics of high-temperature1 superconducting materials. BCS theory, which describes low-temperature (i.e., < 30 Kelvin) superconductors, is not well-suited for high-temperature materials due to factors such as strong electron-electron interactions and the presence of other exotic states of matter. To my knowledge, there is no all-encompassing HTSC theory.
References
[1] Speller, Susannah. A Materials Science Guide to Superconductors and How to Make Them Super. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Footnotes
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High-temperature superconductors are meaningful only in the context of cryogenics, which involves the application of refrigeration to cool samples down; they operate at temperatures up to about -150 degrees Celsius. ↩
I haven't had much time to devote to these notes. I'm hoping to finish them by end of this year, 🙏.
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