The United States has created the most highly efficient segment of superconducting wire in the world

Scientists from the State University of New York at Buffalo (The University of Buffalo) reported the creation of the most highly efficient segment of superconducting wire in the world. We are not yet talking about the process of industrial production of HTSC wires, but the basics of the technology are assessed as extremely promising.

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High-temperature superconductivity (HTSC) promises to radically reduce energy losses, speed up the appearance of superconducting magnets for controlled thermonuclear reactors, radically change nuclear imaging in medicine, and much more that will change people’s lives for the better. It is only necessary to find materials that would have superconductivity at sufficiently high temperatures and (or) learn to produce HTSC wires with a price/quality ratio, for example, like ordinary copper wires. Scientists from the USA came closer to the second option, although in their case the conductor still retained superconductivity at a fairly high temperature of -196 ℃.

Researchers have developed a process in which a laser evaporates material deposited on a high-temperature superconductor wire, creating a thin-film coating with high-temperature conductivity through deposition. According to them, they have created the world’s thinnest coating of this kind – only 0.2 microns, which is an order of magnitude thinner compared to previous work. For the sake of fairness, we note that the experiment was carried out on a small section of wire only 4 mm wide. However, this made it possible to measure all the necessary characteristics, which turned out to be excellent.

Thus, the treated section of the HTSC wire based on the REBCO material guaranteed the transmission of a current of 190 million A/cm2 without an external field and 90 million A/cm2 under the influence of a field of 7 tesla. These characteristics are achieved at a temperature of 4.2 K (-268.95 ℃). At 20 K (-253.15 ℃), which is expected to be the operating temperature for starting commercial fusion, the wire still passed over 150 million A/cm2 without a field and over 60 million A/cm2 in a 7 Tesla field.

The treated wire segment also demonstrated the world’s highest eddy current retention (eddy pinning) and high critical current values ​​at which the material loses superconductivity.

«These results will help guide the industry toward further optimization of application and manufacturing conditions to significantly improve the cost/performance ratio of commercial coated conductors,” said project leader and lead author Amit Goyal.