No Arabic abstract
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.
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.
We demonstrate that Fe sheathed LaO0.9F0.1FeAs wires with Ti as a buffer layer were successfully fabricated by the powder-in-tube (PIT) method. Comparing to the common two-step vacuum quartz tube synthesis method, the PIT method is more convenient and safe for synthesizing the novel iron-based layered superconductors. Structural analysis by mean of x-ray diffraction shows that the main phase of LaO0.9F0.1FeAs was obtained by this synthesis method. The transition temperature of the LaO0.9F0.1FeAs wire is around 25 K. The micrograph shows a homogeneous microstructure with a grain size of 1-3 micrometers. The results suggest that the PIT process is promising in preparing high-quality iron-based layered superconductor wires.
A huge enhancement of the superconducting transition temperature Tc was observed in tetragonal FeSe superconductor under high pressure. The onset temperature became as high as 27 K at 1.48 GPa and the pressure coefficient showed a huge value of 9.1 K/GPa. The upper critical field Hc2 was estimated to be ~ 72 T at 1.48 GPa. Because of the high Hc2, FeSe system may be a candidate for application as superconducting wire rods. Moreover, the investigation of superconductivity on simple structured FeSe may provide important clues to the mechanism of superconductivity in iron-based superconductors.
We report dc transport and magnetization measurements of Jc in MgB2 wires fabricated by the powder-in-tube method, using commercial MgB2 powder with 5 %at Mg powder added as an additional source of magnesium, and stainless steel as sheath material. By appropriate heat treatments, we have been able to increase Jc by more than one order of magnitude from that of the as-drawn wire. We show that one beneficial effect of the annealing is the elimination of most of the micro-cracks, and we correlate the increase in Jc with the disappearance of the weak-link-type behavior.
The effect of the quality of starting powders on the microstructure and superconducting properties of in-situ processed Fe-sheathed MgB2 tapes has been investigated. Three different types of commercial atomized spherical magnesium powder and two different purities of amorphous boron powder were employed. When using the 10-micrometre magnesium as precursor powders, the Mg reacted with boron more uniformly and quickly, thus the uniformity of the fabricated MgB2 was improved and the grain size of the MgB2 was decreased, hence significant critical current density (Jc) enhancements were achieved for MgB2 tapes. Jc at 4.2 K for MgB2 tapes made from the 10 um Mg and high purity boron powders was at least a factor of ten higher than values measured for MgB2 samples made from all other starting powders. At 20 K, 5 T, the typical Jc values of the tapes were over 1.0x10^4 A/cm^2 and were much better than those of tape samples reported recently.