Organic superconductors

Recently, a series of organic materials have been created with a rare and extraordinary property: superconductivity. Previously, superconductivity had been observed only in metals and metallic alloys. Establishing superconductivity in an organic solid seems remarkable because the great majority of synthetic organic materials are electrical insulators. The conditions under which the superconducting state was observed in the organic compound were extreme. The temperature was .90K and the pressure was 12,000 atmospheres. In less than a year, five other synthetic organic compounds were found to be superconducting, one of them is superconducting at normal atmospheric pressure, although a low temperature is still required for all materials. (SC)