Hard-Wired Dopant Networks and the Prediction of High Transition Temperatures in Ceramic Superconductors.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Condensed Matter Physics Volume 2010, Article ID 250891, 13 pages doi:10.1155/2010/250891 Review Article Hard-Wired Dopant Networks and the Prediction of High Transition Temperatures in Ceramic Superconductors J. C. Phillips Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8019, USA Correspondence should be addressed to J. C. Phillips, jcphillips8@ Received 22 May 2009; Accepted 17 August 2009 Academic Editor: Sasha Alexandrov Copyright © 2010 J. C. Phillips. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. I review the multiple successes of the discrete hard-wired dopant network model ZZIP, and comment on the equally numerous failures of continuum models, in describing and predicting the properties of ceramic superconductors. The prediction of transition temperatures can be regarded in several ways, either as an exacting test of theory, or as a tool for identifying theoretical rules for defining new homology models. Popular “first principle” methods for predicting transition temperatures in conventional crystalline superconductors have failed for cuprate HTSC, as have parameterized models based on CuO2 planes (with or without apical oxygen). Following a path suggested by Bayesian probability, it was found that the glassy, self-organized dopant network percolative model is so successful that it defines a new homology class appropriate to ceramic superconductors. The reasons for this success in an exponentially complex (non-polynomial complete, NPC) problem are discussed, and a critical comparison is made with previous polynom