[syhprum (OP)]

Traditionally Silver has been considered to be the best electrical conductor, has any recent research found anything better ?

[CliffordK]

Super Conductors?

[alancalverd]

Pyrolytic graphite. It's highly anisotropic, with amazingly good electrical and thermal conductivity in one plane but more like a semiconductor in the perpendicular direction.

[evan_au]

At room temperature, graphene has slightly better conductivity than silver. However, graphene is a 2-dimensional conductor, and does not conduct well between the graphene layers.

"Better" can mean many things:

• In terms of cost, aluminium is "better" than silver, and silver is better than graphene - if you want to make a wires of a given resistance. (Graphene currently has a ridiculous price, if you work it out per kg).
  
• If mass is important for your application, then aluminium is "better" than silver.
  
• If ease of making high-quality joins is important, then copper or silver is "better" than aluminium.
  
• If ductility is important (and the quantity is small, as in semiconductor chips), gold is "best".
• ...and Superconductors beat all the rest - if you can afford the cryogenic refrigeration and the space for all the thermal insulation.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_conductivity#Resistivity_of_various_materials

[syhprum (OP)]

Many thanks for bringing me up to date I suspected that some exotic modern materials might have a lower resistivity but as you say how you define best leads to several other materials