Superconductivity News for the MgB₂ Community

 
The major developments relevant to producing MgB₂ conductors over the past few months have been the reports of new YB₄ precipitate and the Si+C co-solution methods. These both improve J_c and H_irr in higher fields (above 1T), and are thus potentially useful for rotating machinery applications.

The YB₄ paper from Imperial was published on April 22, 2002, showing TEM pictures of precipitates from Wisconsin; and the surprising solubility of SiC was first posted by Wollongong on June 24, 2002.

Initial electric power products made using MgB₂ conductors are likely to be iron-cored, and thus limited to less than 1.6T, but attracting investment to developing the material is likely to depend on the possibility of developing iron-free, high field machines in later years. Thus these alloying improvements are good news for the long term future of the material.
posted by Philip at 22:46