Leonid N Grigorov

Leonid N. Grigorov
Residence	Rohnert Park, CA, United States
Nationality	Russian / USA
Alma mater	Moscow State University; Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology; Karpov Physico-Chemical Institute
Known for	Superconductivity, Room temperature superconductors
Scientific career
Fields	Physics, Physical chemistry, Biophysics
Institutions	Institute of Synthetic Polymer Materials, USSR Academy of Sciences; Nanosyn Inc.

Leonid N. Grigorov is a Russian-American physicist and physical chemist known for his research on the possibility of superconductivity in polymer materials, and in particular for reported observations of room-temperature superconductivity in films of oxidized atactic polypropylene.

Biography

Grigorov earned his M.S. in Physics from Moscow State University, his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and his D.Sc. in Physico-Mathematical Sciences from the Karpov Physico-Chemical Institute in Moscow. During the 1980s and 1990s he headed a research laboratory at the Institute of Synthetic Polymer Materials of the USSR (later Russian) Academy of Sciences, where his group carried out much of its work on conduction in polymers. He later moved to the United States, settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has worked as a senior engineer at Nanosyn Inc. He resides in Rohnert Park, California.

Scientific contributions

Grigorov's research addressed the theoretical conditions under which high-temperature superconductivity might arise in organic polymers. He argued that high-temperature superconductivity could be achieved only in genuinely one-dimensional conducting systems, and that conventional conjugated polymers do not provide true one-dimensional conductivity. As an alternative he proposed a class of nonconjugated polar elastomers as candidate materials, in which self-organized conducting structures he termed "superpolarons" could form through internal self-ionization of the polymer matrix and the subsequent ordering of free polarons.

Beginning with work reported in 1982, Grigorov and his colleagues described anomalous electrical and magnetic behavior in narrow channels through films of oxidized atactic polypropylene, which they interpreted as evidence of superconducting current paths at room temperature. Reported observations included very low resistance that was independent of film thickness, as well as large diamagnetism at low magnetic fields. These claims were published in Soviet and international journals during the late 1980s and 1990s, including a 1989 report in JETP Letters on possible superconductivity near 300 K in oxidized polypropylene, a 1990 paper on conditions for the formation of superconductive polymers, and a 1994 paper in Synthetic Metals on possible high-current superconductivity in oxidized polypropylene and other quasi one-dimensional systems.

The findings attracted commercial interest in the United States, where a company, Room Temperature Superconductors Inc., was established to develop the material, marketed under the name "Ultraconductor," with support that included several Small Business Innovation Research contracts. The reported room-temperature superconductivity in oxidized polypropylene remains scientifically unconfirmed and controversial, and the phenomenon has not been reproduced in a form accepted by the broader physics community.

External links

• Leonid Grigorov - bibliographic patent references
• Grigorov, "Conditions for the formation of superconductive polymers and possibilities for their realization" (1990)
• Grigorov et al., "Possible high-current superconductivity at room temperature in oxidised polypropylene and other quasi one-dimensional systems" (1994)
• Modification of a charged-Bose-gas model for observed room-temperature superconductivity in oxidised atactic polypropylene (arXiv)