In line with the rapid development of research on high-temperature superconductors, the State Commission of Development & Planning (SCDP) ratified the establishment of a National Laboratory for Superconductivity in the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1987. The preparations were started in 1988, and in April of 1991, the Laboratory was finally established, accepted and listed as a National Laboratory, which has been officially open to both domestic and foreign researchers. After the joint appraisal and acceptance by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Ministry of Science & Technology, it was honored with a title of the outstanding National Laboratory in 2000. And in 2002, CAS honored it with a title of Model Team. The director of the Laboratory is Professor Hai-Hu Wen and the chair of the Academic Committee is Professor Zhongxian Zhao.

The main research direction of the Laboratory is focused on: (i)new superconducting materials and their synthesis; (ii)the physical properties including the electronic states and pairing mechanisms of high-temperature superconductors; (iii)high-temperature superconducting thin film fabrication and applications; and (iv)solving the key technical problems in developing superconductor applications and transferring the research findings to industrial sectors.

By taking advantage of its own high-temperature and high-pressure technology, the Laboratory succeeded in developing the superconductor (Pr,Ca)Ba2Cu3O7 with a critical temperature as high as 115K, the highest of its kind in the world. It was regarded as one of the latest advances in search of new superconductor materials by the Sixth International Conference on Superconductors and Related Mechanisms held at Houston, USA in February 2000. In recent years, the Laboratory has synthesized some 60 new compounds (including new superconductors), developed new techniques and reduced the cost for developing new materials. A set of software with the commercial name of "Powder X" to conduct data-processing in the structural analysis of multi-crystalline materials was developed by the Laboratory, winning a registry certificate of the software's authorship issued by the National Copyright Bureau. By now, it has at least more than 400 laboratories or research teams at home and abroad, receiving wide acclaim from the R&D community.

Great achievement has been made in the studies on the intrinsic inhomogeneity of a superconductor's electronic state, which is closely related to the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity. Our hypothesis was proven by the experiments, revealing that the partial replacement of La3+ by Cu2+ ions is capable of enhancing the effect of 3-D anti-ferromagnetism and promoting the separation of electronic phases. For the first time, the co-existence of the ordered state of electric charges under the incommensurable modulation outside the CuO2 plane and an ordered state of spins related to ferromagnetism was observed in this exciting work. A vortex phase diagram in the Tl-2212 system was plotted as a result of studies of the magnetic and electric properties, which rectified the misunderstanding of abnormality of Hc1 in high temperature superconductors since 1993, showing an evidence of possible existence of macroscopic phase separation in the overdoped region. Scientists in the Laboratory also proposed a new electronic phase diagram, which may have strong impacts on the theories of high temperature superconductors.

The existence of a pseudo-energy gap in the excitation spectra of high temperature superconductors was identified through the measurement of single-electron tunneling; the first success of its kind in the world and this finding aroused great interest in the 1997 International Conference on Superconductivity. In 1999, a commentary from the Reports on Progress in Physics pointed out that: "This is the first experimental fact on a pseudo-energy gap in a high Tc with the aid of the tunneling method." This observation was also cited in detail in a separate review article in the Advances in Physics of 1999.

Applied research has also attained a series of advances. Some advanced apparatuses has been made, such as an infra-red detector made from High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) film, a low-loss dielectric film of SrTiO3, dc Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUID), a new nondestructive device for detecting dc SQUID vortices, a configuration for HTS three-terminal field effect in a ferro-electric gate electrode of size 6*10-6 cm2, the smallest in the world to date, etc.

The Laboratory has become a national center for superconductivity research, a talent incubator and a base for academic exchange among domestic and foreign scholars in this field. It succeeded in organizing the Fifth International Conference for Superconductivity Materials & Related Mechanisms(1997), the International Conference on the Mechanism of High Temperature Superconductivity(2001), and First Beijing Forum of the Mechanism of High Temperature Superconductivity(2002), etc. Both training and academic cooperation protocols have been established with such countries and regions as America, Japan, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Russia, Germany, Hong Kong, etc.

In future the Laboratory will develop into a worldwide influential advanced base for basic and applied research in the field of superconductivity. It will strengthen advanced experimental methods and compete with the strongest group in the world, choose the significant scientific and technologic problems in the field and make deeper research on them. On the other hand, it will also become an educational base for qualified personnel full of innovative ideas and strong motivation, including leading young scientists and qualified post-graduates. It will integrate the needs of the nation to make substantial contributions to the science and technology of superconductivity in China.