A joint research team led by Academician Xue Qikun, winner of the highest national science and technology award, from Southern University of Science and Technology, Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area Quantum Science Center, and Tsinghua University, published their research results online in the international academic journal Nature on February 18, Beijing time. They discovered the high-temperature superconductivity of nickel oxide under normal pressure, providing a new breakthrough for solving the scientific problem of high-temperature superconductivity mechanism. Superconductivity is like a "zero energy sports car" on the electric highway, with no loss when current passes through, and is widely regarded as having disruptive technological prospects. Since its discovery in 1911, the phenomenon of superconductivity has become an important research direction in the international scientific community to search for superconducting materials with higher temperatures that can break through the "McMillan limit" of 40K at normal pressure. In response to this challenge, over the past three years, a research team led by Academician Xue Qikun and Associate Professor Chen Zhuoyu has continuously tackled the problem and independently developed the "strong oxide atom layer by layer epitaxy" technology. This technology can achieve layer by layer growth of atomic layers under conditions where the oxidation ability is tens of thousands of times stronger than traditional methods, and precisely control the chemical ratio, like building atomic blocks at the nanoscale, constructing complex, thermodynamically unstable, but crystal quality approaching perfect oxide thin films. This is a major leap in the epitaxial growth technology of oxide thin films, which not only provides a solution to the oxygen deficiency problem of various oxides including wide bandgap semiconductors, but also greatly expands the artificial design and preparation of strongly correlated electronic systems such as high-temperature superconductivity. This research achievement has achieved high-temperature superconductivity of nickel oxide materials under atmospheric pressure, making nickel based materials the third type of high-temperature superconducting material system to break through the "McMillan limit" of 40K at atmospheric pressure, after copper based and iron-based materials. The research on nickel based superconductivity is currently a cutting-edge hotspot in the international scientific community, with extremely fierce global competition. The research team and collaborators from Stanford University in the United States almost simultaneously reported atmospheric superconductivity in similar material systems. The research paths of the Chinese and American teams are independent, and the experiments confirm each other. It is worth mentioning that the Chinese team has all adopted domestically produced instruments and developed a unique strong oxidation ability thin film growth technology, successfully obtaining thin film materials with higher crystal quality. This not only achieved a breakthrough in science, but also laid a solid foundation for China's long-term independent development in the field of superconductivity and even quantum materials. (New Society)