If high temperature superconductors,such YBCO, are to be used in electronic or electrical devices it will be necessary to form low resistance contacts with them. This must be achieved without degradation of the superconducting properties and a recent communication from the New York Institute of Superconductivity reports on the sucessful use of conducting metallic ruthenium oxide, RuO₂, as a low resistance contact electrode for YBCO thin films (Q.-X. Jia and W. A. Anderson, IEEE Trans. Components, Hybrids, Manuf. Technol., 1992, 15, (1), 121–125).

Double-layer contact electrodes of metallic ruthenium oxide overlain with either gold or silver overcame wire bonding problems, and reduced further the contact resistance.