No Arabic abstract
The MgB2 superconductor has already demonstrated its applicative potential, in particular for DC applications such as MRI magnets, thanks to the low costs of the raw materials and to its simple production process. However further efforts have still to be made in order to broaden its employment also towards the AC applications such as SFCL, motors, transformers. The main issues are related to the reduction of the AC losses. Some of these can be faced by obtaining multifilamentary conductors with a large number of very fine filaments and, in this context, the powders granulometry can play a crucial role. We have prepared MgB2 starting powders with different granulometries and by the ex-situ P.I.T method we have realized multifilamentary wires with a number of filaments up to 361 and an average size of each filament lowered down to 30 microns. In particular we have studied the relationship between grain and filament size in terms of transport properties and show that the optimization of this ratio is possible in order to obtain suitable conductors for AC industrial applications.
In DC and AC practical applications of MgB2 superconducting wires an important role is represented by the material sheath which has to provide, among other things, a suitable electrical and thermal stabilization. A way to obtain a large enough amount of low resistivity material in to the conductor architecture is to use it as external sheath. In this paper we study ex-situ multifilamentary MgB2 wires using oxide-dispersion-strengthened copper (GlidCop) as external sheath in order to reach a good compromise between critical current density and thermal properties. We prepared three GlidCop samples differing by the content of dispersed sub-microscopic Al2O3 particles. We characterized the superconducting and thermal properties and we showed that the good thermal conductivity together the good mechanical properties and a reasonable critical current density make of GlidCop composite wire a useful conductor for applications where high thermal conductivity is request at temperature above 30K, such as Superconducting-FCL.
Two types of MgB2 films were prepared by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) with in situ and ex situ annealing processes respectively. Significant differences in properties between the two types of films were found. The ex situ MgB2 film has a Tc of 38.1K, while the in situ film has a depressed Tc of 34.5K. The resistivity at 40K for the in situ film is larger than that of the ex situ film by a factor of 6. The residual resistivity ratios (RRR) are 1.1 and 2.1 for the in situ and ex situ films respectively. The Jc-H curves of the in situ film show a much weaker field dependence than those of the ex situ film, attributable to stronger flux pinning in the in situ film. The small-grain feature and high oxygen level may be critical for the significant improvement of Jc in the in situ annealed MgB2 film.
MgB2 monofilamentary nickel-sheated tapes and wires were fabricated by means of the ex-situ powder-in-tube method using either high-energy ball milled and low temperature synthesized powders. All sample were sintered at 920 C in Ar flow. The milling time and the revolution speed were tuned in order to maximize the critical current density in field (Jc): the maximum Jc value of 6 x 10e4 A/cm2 at 5 K and 4 T was obtained corresponding to the tape prepared with powders milled for 144h at 180rpm. Vorious synthesis temperature were also investigated (730-900 C) finding a best Jc value for the wire prepared with powders synthesized at 745 C. We speculate that this optimal temperature is due to the fluidifying effect of unreacted magnesium content before the sintering process which could better connect the grains.
We have fabricated a series of iron-sheathed superconducting wires prepared by the powder-in-tube technique from (MgB_2)_{1-x}:(Mg+2B)_x initial powder mixtures taken with different proportions, so that x varies from 0 to 1. It turned out that ex-situ prepared wire (x = 0) has considerable disadvantages compared to all the other wires in which in-situ assisted (0 < x < 1) or pure in-situ (x = 1) preparation was used due to weaker inter-grain connectivity. As a result, higher critical current densities J_c were measured over the entire range of applied magnetic fields B_a for all the samples with x > 0. Pinning of vortices in MgB_2 wires is shown to be due to grain boundaries. J_c(B_a) behavior is governed by an interplay between the transparency of grain boundaries and the amount of pinning grain boundaries. Differences between thermo-magnetic flux-jump instabilities in the samples and a possible threat to practical applications are also discussed.
The two most common types of MgB2 conductor fabrication technique - in-situ and ex-situ - show increasing conflicts concerning the connectivity, an effective current-carrying cross-sectional area. An in-situ reaction yields a strong intergrain coupling with a low packing factor, while an ex-situ process using pre-reacted MgB2 yields tightly packed grains, however, their coupling is much weaker. We studied the normal-state resistivity and microstructure of ex-situ MgB2 bulks synthesized with varied heating conditions under ambient pressure. The samples heated at moderately high temperatures of ~900{deg}C for a long period showed an increased packing factor, a larger intergrain contact area and a significantly decreased resistivity, all of which indicate the solid-state self-sintering of MgB2. Consequently the connectivity of the sintered ex-situ samples exceeded the typical connectivity range 5-15% of the in-situ samples. Our results show self-sintering develops the superior connectivity potential of ex-situ MgB2, though its intergrain coupling is not yet fulfilled, to provide a strong possibility of twice or even much higher connectivity in optimally sintered ex-situ MgB2 than in in-situ MgB2.