Who discovered the first high-temperature ceramic superconductors in 1986?

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conductive ceramics Figure 1: Schematic diagram of a zirconia oxygen sensor used to monitor automobile exhaust gases. The sensor, approximately the size of a spark plug, is fitted into the exhaust manifold of an automobile engine. The thimble-shaped zirconia sensor, sandwiched between thin layers of porous platinum, is exposed on its interior to outside air and on its exterior to exhaust gas passing through slits in the sensor shield. The two platinum surfaces serve as electrodes, conducting a voltage across the zirconia that varies according to the difference in oxygen content between the exhaust gas and the outside air.

The first high-temperature ceramic superconductors were discovered in 1986 by Swiss researchers J. Georg Bednorz and Karl Alex Müller.123

Working at the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory, the pair systematically tested various metal oxides and successfully achieved superconductivity in a barium-lanthanum-copper oxide at 35 kelvins. This breakthrough significantly exceeded the previous record for transition temperatures and earned them the 1987 Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery shifted the focus of materials science toward ceramic oxides, leading to the development of other high-temperature superconductors that could eventually be cooled using liquid nitrogen rather than more expensive liquid helium.132