Copper the conductor happens to be immensely popular because you may find cheaper variants to make use of but the same properties are difficult to come by. The copper wire has been in use for a long time now for electric wiring whether it is for the home or the office buildings.

A power cable is the one that is used for electrical transmission. An insulating sheath covers a group of conductors and the cable is then installed for transmission. The way this happens does vary. You may find this cable running overhead. It may be exposed or buried in the ground.
A silver copper wire or a tin copper wire happen to be variants of copper that have been built for tweaking the properties of the basic material in order to make it more robust and usable in the most diverse settings.
Various chemical methods are being developed and used for manufacturing different kinds of conductors. With large scale use of conductors in manufacturing setups, certain standard products are known to be manufactured. Apart from this there is provision for giving exact specifications.
Experiments in the field continue to make more robust, efficient and economical conductors. All this can surely be expected to bear fruit in the future.