You can turn a carbon nanotube into a high-temp superconductor just by stretching it out.
arXiv · March 17, 2026 · 2603.15305
The Takeaway
Superconductors usually require extreme cold or crushing pressure to work. Researchers found that pulling on a microscopic carbon tube like a rubber band could allow it to carry electricity with zero resistance at temperatures much warmer than previously thought possible for this material.
From the abstract
Superconductivity in quasi-one-dimensional systems is an significant but undervalued research field. In this work, based on the electron-phonon coupling mechanism, we systematically investigate the superconductivity in quasi-one-dimensional carbon nanotube under uniaxial tensile strain. The calculated superconducting critical temperature attains its peak value of 162 K at a uniaxial tensile strain of 4.5\%, being drastically higher than the counterpart in the unstrained carbon nanotube. An overa