FluxMateria's inverse-design pipeline screened 12,800 candidates and identified a patent-pending composition family with predicted Tc above 160 K — from first search to synthesis-ready leads in under 24 hours.
OLBIA, Sardinia (Italy), March 24, 2026. FluxMateria today published a detailed case study and white paper documenting the computational discovery of a novel tungsten-cuprate superconductor family using its materials inverse-design pipeline.
The primary lead composition, WCaBaCu3O7Mo, is a tungsten-modified calcium-barium-copper oxide with a predicted critical temperature of 160.3 K at ambient pressure — which, if confirmed experimentally, would surpass the current record holder HgBa2Ca2Cu3O8 (133 K) by over 20%. The composition family is patent-pending.
The discovery used a five-stage computational funnel: generate, screen, refine, validate, and package. Starting from 12,800+ stoichiometric candidates across cuprate-family branches, the pipeline applied charge-balance checks, phase-stability screening, economics filtering, and manufacturing-readiness scoring to converge on three experiment-ready compositions:
| Composition | Branch | Predicted Tc | Est. cost/kg |
|---|---|---|---|
| WCaBaCu3O7Mo | Mo (primary) | 160.3 K | ~$21 |
| WCaBaCu3O6Mo | Mo (control) | 160.3 K | ~$22 |
| WCaBaCu3O6Nb | Nb (cross-branch) | 158.2 K | ~$25 |
All three compositions operate well above the liquid nitrogen boiling point (77 K), meaning they would require only inexpensive liquid-nitrogen cooling rather than costly helium-based systems.
No experimentally verified cuprate superconductor contains tungsten. However, W6+ has a large ionic radius and strong electron-sink character structurally analogous to the Hg2+ and Tl3+ sites in the highest-Tc cuprates — but tungsten is earth-abundant, non-toxic, and three orders of magnitude cheaper than mercury.
What distinguishes this work is that the pipeline delivered not only candidate compositions but a complete three-axis experimental design that interrogates composition space, oxygen history, and pressure history simultaneously. The synthesis plan uses conventional ceramic solid-state processing with commercially available oxide and carbonate precursors — no exotic equipment required.
All Tc values reported are computational predictions from the FluxMateria screening engine. The compositions have not yet been synthesized or experimentally verified. The case study is published to establish prior art and to invite collaboration with experimental groups equipped for cuprate synthesis.
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Detailed methodology, complete screening data, synthesis protocols, and validation framework.
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