Silane is a new superconducting material fabricated by a Canadian-German team which is composed of a single silicon atom (big grey one in the middle) surrounded by four hydrogen atom (white). The new family of superconductors was fabricated by professor John Tse of the University of Saskatchewan and his doctoral candidate Yansun Yao, with experimental confirmation performed by researcher Mikhail Eremets at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Researchers have speculated for years that hydrogen under enough pressure would superconduct at room temperature, but have been unable to achieve the necessary conditions (hydrogen is the most difficult element to compress). The Canadian and German researchers attributed their success to adding hydrogen to a compound with silicon that reduced the amount of compression needed to achieve superconductivity. Tse's team is currently using the Canadian Light Source synchrotron to characterize the high pressure structures of silane and other hydrides as potential superconducting materials for industrial applications as well as a storage mechanism for hydrogen fuel cells.