Thermal conductivity heat flow may not be exactly the same as the direction of the thermal gradient. In metals, thermal conductivity approximately tracks electrical conductivity according to the Wiedemann–Franz law, as freely moving valence electrons transfer not only electric current but also heat energy. However, the general correlation between electrical and thermal conductance does not hold for other materials, due to the increased importance of phonon carriers for heat in non-metals. Highly electrically conductive silver is less thermally conductive than diamond, which is an electrical insulator, but due to its orderly array of atoms it is conductive of heat via phonons. The
Metallic hydrogen metallized and become superconducting by M.I. Eremets "et al.". This claim is disputed, and their results have not been repeated. In 2011 Eremets and Troyan reported observing the liquid metallic state of hydrogen and deuterium at static pressures of . This claim was questioned by other researchers in 2012. In 2015, scientists at the Z Pulsed Power Facility announced the creation of metallic deuterium using dense liquid deuterium, an electrical insulator-to-conductor transition associated with an increase in optical reflectivity. On 5 October 2016, Ranga Dias and Isaac F. Silvera of Harvard University released claims of experimental evidence that solid metallic