Heat makes atoms move and can shake Cooper pairs apart, so the holy grail is to design a material where the pairs are bound together so strongly that superconductivity can happen even up to room temperature. It might be possible to describe a Fermi surface that would create that condition, and perhaps then imagine what crystal structure it would require. “Ideally we would like to be able to tell the materials scientist to put elements X, Y and Z together,” Lee said. “Unfortunately we can’t do that yet.”

via New superconductor theory may revolutionize electrical engineering.