No Arabic abstract
Among the recently discovered Fe-based superconducting compounds, the (K,Ba)Fe2As2 phase is attracting large interest within the scientific community interested in conductor developments. In fact, after some years of development, critical current densities Jc of about 105 A/cm2 at fields up to more than 10 T have been obtained in powder in tube (PIT) processed wires and tapes. Here we explore the crucial points in the wire/tape fabrication by means of the ex-situ PIT method. We focus on scaling up processes which are crucial for the industrial fabrication. We analyzed the effects on the microstructure of the different heat and mechanical treatments. By an extensive microstructural analysis correlated with the transport properties we addressed the issues concerning the phase purity, the internal porosity and crack formation in the superconducting core region. Our best conductors with a filling factor of about 30 heat treated at 800 C exhibited Tc = 38 K the highest value measured in such kind of superconducting tape. The microstructure analysis shows clean and well connected grain boundaries but rather poor density: The measured Jc of about 3 x 10^4 A/cm2 in self-field is suppressed by less than a factor 7 at 7 T. Such not yet optimized Jc values can be accounted for by the reduced density while the moderate in-field suppression and a rather high n-factor confirm the high homogeneity and uniformity of these tapes.
The high upper critical field and low anisotropy of iron-based superconductors make them being particularly attractive for high-field applications. However, the current carrying capability needs to be enhanced by overcoming the weak-link effect between misaligned grains inside wire and tape conductors. Here we demonstrate a high transport critical current density (Jc) reaching 1.5x10^5 A/cm^2 (Ic = 437 A) at 4.2 K and 10 T in Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2 (Ba-122) tapes prepared by a combination of conventional powder-in-tube method and optimized hot-press technique. The transport Jc measured at 4.2 K under high magnetic fields of 27 T is still on the level of 5.5x10^4 A/cm^2, which is much higher than those of low-temperature superconductors. This is the first report of hot-pressed Ba-122 superconducting tapes and these Jc values are by far the highest ever reported for iron-based superconducting wires and tapes. These high-performance tapes exhibit high degree of c-axis texture of Ba-122 grains and low anisotropy of transport Jc, showing great potential for construction of high-field superconducting magnets.
In this work, the feasibility condition of Powder-In-Tube (PIT) processed wires of Fe(Se,Te) superconductor has been investigated. We faced several technical issues that are extensively described and discussed. In particular, we tested different metals and alloys as external sheaths (Cu, Ag, Nb, Ta, Ni, Fe, cupronickel, brass) concluding that the only sheath that does not affect substantially the Fe(Se,Te) phase is Fe. On the other hand, Fe sheath introduces excess iron in the Fe(Se,Te) phase, which affects the superconducting properties; we investigated the effects of the thermal treatments and of the powder composition in order to avoid it. The maximum Jc value obtained in our samples is 4*10^2 A/cm2, comparable to other published values of PIT conductors of the 11 family. We conclude that the fabrication of Fe(Se,Te) wires by PIT method is quite challenging and other approaches should be developed.
We report on the superconducting performance of the ex-situ SiC doped MgB2 monofilamentary tapes. Polycrystalline powders of MgB2 doped with 5 and 10 wt% SiC were synthesized by conventional solid-state reaction route and characterized for their superconducting performance. It is found that superconducting parameters i.e. upper critical field (Hc2), irreversibility field (Hirr) and critical current density (Jc) are all improved significantly with SiC addition. Also it was found that relatively lower synthesis temperature (700 C) resulted in further improved superconducting parameters. As synthesized powders are used for ex-situ powder-in-tube (PIT) monofilamentary tapes and superconducting parameters are determined. Albeit the superconducting transition temperature (Tc) is decreased slightly (2K) for SiC doped tapes, the superconducting performance in terms of critical current density (Jc), being determined from both magnetization and transport measurements, is improved significantly. In particular the SiC doped and 700 {deg}C synthesized MgB2 tapes exhibited the transport Jc of nearly 10^4 A/cm2 under applied fields of as high as 7 Tesla. Further it is found that the Jc anisotropy decreases significantly for SiC doped tapes. Disorder due to substitution of C at B site being created from broken SiC and the presence of nano SiC respectively in SiC added ex-situ MgB2 tapes are responsible for decreased anisotropy and improved Jc(H) performance.
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.
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.