This review focuses on the superconducting properties of MgB2 that are relevant for power applications. The reversible mixed state parameters are the most important, since they define the limiting conditions for loss-free currents: the transition temperature, the upper critical field and the depairing current. They also determine the flux pinning energy, the pinning force and the elastic properties of the flux line lattice and, therefore, strongly influence the critical current densities. The magnetic properties of magnesium diboride are anisotropic and influenced by the two different energy gaps of the σ- and π-bands. Whereas the transition temperature could not be enhanced significantly during the past five years, the upper critical field was considerably increased by impurity scattering or doping. Flux pinning is very weak in MgB2 single crystals and was only improved by irradiation techniques so far. In polycrystalline samples, grain boundary pinning seems to play the dominant role. High critical currents close to the theoretical limit were found in c-axis oriented thin films. The anisotropy of the upper critical field strongly reduces the critical currents in untextured MgB2 at high magnetic fields, where the supercurrents become highly percolative, since not all grains are superconducting anymore. The performance of polycrystalline wires and tapes was significantly improved during the past few years by increasing the upper critical field and by reducing its anisotropy. Pinning seems to be nearly optimized in many forms of this material, but the connectivity between the grains might be further improved.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0953-2048/20/12/R01/pdf

Magnetic properties and critical currents of MgB2

Significant efforts can be found throughout the literature to optimize the current-carrying capacity of Nb3Sn superconducting wires. The achievable transport current density in wires depends on the A15 composition, morphology and strain state. The A15 sections in wires contain, due to compositional inhomogeneities resulting from solid-state diffusion A15 formation reactions, a distribution of superconducting properties. The A15 grain size can be different from wire to wire, and is also not necessarily homogeneous across the A15 regions. Strain is always present in composite wires, and the strain state changes as a result of thermal contraction differences and Lorentz forces in magnet systems. To optimize the transport properties, it is thus required to identify how composition, grain size and strain state influence the superconducting properties. This is not possible accurately in inhomogeneous and spatially complex systems such as wires. This article therefore gives an overview of the available literature on simplified, well-defined (quasi-)homogeneous laboratory samples. After more than 50 years of research on superconductivity in Nb3Sn, a significant amount of results are available, but these are scattered over a multitude of publications. Two reviews exist on the basic properties of A15 materials in general, but no specific review for Nb3Sn is available. This article is intended to provide such an overview. It starts with a basic description of the niobium–tin intermetallic. After that, it maps the influence of Sn content on the electron–phonon interaction strength and on the field–temperature phase boundary. The literature on the influence of Cu, Ti and Ta additions will then be summarized briefly. This is followed by a review of the effects of grain size and strain. The article concludes with a summary of the main results.

/pdf/a-review-of-the-properties-of-nb3sn-and-their-variation-with-55dz895yba.pdf

A Review of the Properties of Nb3Sn and Their Variation with A15 Composition, Morphology and Strain State

Since the 1960s, Nb-Ti (superconducting transition temperature T/sub c/=9 K) and Nb/sub 3/Sn (T/sub c/=18 K) have been the materials of choice for virtually all superconducting magnets. However, the prospects for the future changed dramatically in 1987 with the discovery of layered cuprate superconductors with T/sub c/ values that now extend up to about 135 K. Fabrication of useful conductors out of the cuprates has been difficult, but a first generation of silver-sheathed composite conductors based on (Bi,Pb)/sub 2/Sr/sub 2/Ca/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 10/ (T/sub c//spl sim/110 K) has already been commercialized. Recent progress on a second generation of biaxially aligned coated conductors using the less anisotropic YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 7/ structure has been rapid, suggesting that it too might enter service in the near future. The discovery of superconductivity in MgB/sub 2/ below 39 K in 2001 has brought yet another candidate material to the large-scale applications mix. Two distinct markets for superconductor wires exist-the more classical low-temperature magnet applications such as particle accelerators, nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging magnets, and plasma-containment magnets for fusion power, and the newer and potentially much larger market for electric power equipment, such as motors, generators, synchronous condensers, power transmission cables, transformers, and fault-current limiters for the electric utility grid. We review key properties and recent progress in these materials and assess their prospects for further development and application.

/pdf/superconducting-materials-for-large-scale-applications-2fd5psn19n.pdf

Superconducting materials for large scale applications

Nb3Al has been considered as an alternative to Nb3Sn for high-field and large-scale applications, since an extremely high critical current density and excellent strain tolerance were demonstrated in Nb3Al by laboratory tests. Thus, there have been a great number of efforts in the exploration of new fabrication processes for Nb3Al. The processes explored can be classified into three groups: low-temperature processes (jelly-roll, powder metallurgy, clad chip extrusion, rod-in-tube), high-temperature processes (laser- or electron-beam irradiation), and transformation processes. This review describes Nb3Al conductors for each processing group, focusing on current topics relating to the rapid-heating, quenching and transformation method in which an excellent Nb3Al conductor can be obtained with a multifilamentary structure over several hundred metres in length.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0953-2048/13/9/201/pdf

Nb3Al conductors for high-field applications

We review the scaling relations for the critical current density (Jc) in Nb3Sn wires and include recent findings on the variation of the upper critical field (Hc2) with temperature (T) and A15 composition. Measurements of Hc2(T) in inevitably inhomogeneous wires, as well as analysis of literature results, have shown that all available Hc2(T) data can be accurately described by a single relation from the microscopic theory. This relation also holds for inhomogeneity averaged, effective, Hc2*(T) results and can be approximated by Hc2(t)=Hc2(0) = 1-t1.52, with t = T=Tc.Knowing Hc2*(T) implies that also Jc(T) is known. We highlight deficiencies in the Summers/Ekin relations, which are not able to account for the correct Jc(T) dependence. Available Jc(H) results indicate that the magnetic field dependence for all wires from mu0H = 1 T up to about 80 percent of the maximum Hc2 can be described with Kramer's flux shear model, if non-linearities in Kramer plots when approaching the maximum Hc2 are attributed to A15 inhomogeneities. The strain (e) dependence is introduced through a temperature and strain dependent Hc2*(T,e) and Ginzburg-Landau parameter kappa1(T,e) and a strain dependent critical temperature Tc(e). This is more consistent than the usual Ekin unification of strain and temperature dependence, which uses two separate and different dependencies on Hc2*(T) and Hc2*(e). Using a correct temperature dependence and accounting for the A15 inhomogeneities leads to the remarkable simple relation Jc(H,T,e)= (C/mu0H)s(e)(1-t1.52)(1-t2)h0.5(1-h)2, where C is a constant, s(e) represents the normalized strain dependence of Hc2*(0) andh = H/Hc2*(T,e). Finally, a new relation for s(e) is proposed, which is an asymmetric version of our earlier deviatoric strain model and based on the first, second and third strain invariants. The new scaling relation solves a number of much debated issues withrespect to Jc scaling in Nb3Sn and is therefore of importance to the applied community, who use scaling relations to analyze magnet performance from wire results.

A general scaling relation for the critical current density in Nb3Sn

The Nb tube process has recently been developed at NRIM(Japan) for fabricating Nb3Al multifilamentary superconductors,1–3 which are characterized by the heat treatment at low temperature ( 1700°C), many attempts were made to form Nb3A1 by heat treating Nb/AI composite at high temperatures.4–6 However, rapid grain growth decreased the density of pinning center (grain boundary) in Nb3A1 and thereby degraded Jc in particular at low magnetic fields. To overcome this problem, Nb3A1 conductors fabricated through a rapid-quenching process have been studied. In this process the A15 Nb3A1 phase with fine grain structure can be precipitated from the supersaturated Nb-Al bcc phase by aging at ~800°C. However, no attempt was made to fabricate a practical-structure conductor such as a long multifilamentary wire through continuous rapid-quenching and subsequent annealing (post annealing) process.

Nb3Al Multifilamentary Wires Continuously Fabricated by Rapid-Quenching

Strain effects on critical current densities have been examined for conductors containing nearly stoichiometric Nb3Al filaments with fine grains. The Nb3Al phase in these multifilamentary conductors are prepared by phase transformation from supersaturated Nb(Al) bcc solid solution and show high-field critical current densities much larger than those for conventionally prepared Nb3Al conductors, where the Nb3Al phase is known to be off-stoichiometric. The degradation of critical current densities with −0.7% intrinsic strain is ca. 20% at 12 T, comparable with those for conventional Nb3Al conductors of high strain tolerance.

Strain effects in Nb3Al multifilamentary conductors prepared by phase transformation from bcc supersaturated-solid solution

Status and perspective of the Nb3Al development

Microstructures of rapidly-heated/quenched and transformed Nb/sub 3/Al multifilamentary wires were studied by using transmission electron microscopy. Nb/Al composite wires are fabricated by a jelly-roll process. The Nb/Al composite filaments changed into an Nb-Al supersaturated bcc solid solution with rapid-heating/quenching. The Nb-Al bcc phase consists of many crystal grains with diameters of 2-4 /spl mu/m, surrounded with large-angle grain boundaries. Some spherical voids, about 0.1 micron in diameter, were also observed at the intra- and intergrains. All grain boundaries of the Nb-Al bcc phases are simple flat planes. Then, the Nb-Al bcc phases were transformed into A15 phases (grain size: 0.5-2.0 /spl mu/m in diameter) with additional annealing. Secondary phases were not observed in the A15 filaments. Grain boundaries of the A15 phases show zig-zag shape unlike those of the Nb-Al bcc phases, and every grain of A15 phases is an aggregation of sub-grains of 80-150 nm in diameter. Sub-grain boundaries are small-angle ones. Moreover we found that many stacking faults formed in the A15 sub-grains in parallel with spaces of 10-20 nm. These numerous plane defects seem to be the main pinning centers in the rapidly-heated/quenched and transformed Nb/sub 3/Al wires.

Microstructures of rapidly-heated/quenched and transformed Nb/sub 3/Al multifilamentary superconducting wires

The Nb tube process has recently been developed at NRIM (Japan) for fabricating Nb3Al multifilamentary superconductors containing more than one million continuous ultrafine filaments of less than 0.1 μm diameter. The adjustment of hardness of Al cores relative to Nb matrix by alloying Al cores with additives of Mg, Ag(-Ge), Cu(-Ge), Zn, etc. improved remarkably the cold workability of Nb/Al composites. Wires heat treated below 1000°C show superior properties to a commercial multifilamentary (Nb,Ti)3Sn conductor: (1) higherJ
c (4.2 K) (1.5×109 A/m2 at 10 T), (2) smaller degradation inJ
c with mechanical strain, and (3) smaller ac loss (resulting from a smaller effective superconducting filament diameter: about 2 μm). Furthermore, sensitivity to irradiation is nearly the same as that of (Nb,Ti)3Sn. Other techniques to produce Nb3Al are unsuitable for developing a conductor with multifilamentary structure, and thereby the Nb tube processed Nb3Al multifilamentary conductors is the best available for fusion reactor magnets.

Yasuo Iijima

Papers

Nb3Al Multifilamentary Wires Continuously Fabricated by Rapid-Quenching

Strain effects in Nb3Al multifilamentary conductors prepared by phase transformation from bcc supersaturated-solid solution

Status and perspective of the Nb3Al development

Microstructures of rapidly-heated/quenched and transformed Nb/sub 3/Al multifilamentary superconducting wires

Development of Nb tube processed Nb3Al multifilamentary superconductor