An Artifical Pinning Center Approach to the Manufacture of High Field NbTaTi Superconducting Wire

50437-98-I An Artifical Pinning Center Approach to the Manufacture of High Field NbTaTi Superconducting Wire--Alabama Cryogenic Engineering, Inc., P.O. Box 2470, Huntsville, AL 35804-2470; (205) 536-8629 Dr. John B. Hendricks, Principal Investigator Ms. Mary T. Hendricks, Business Official DOE Grant No. DE-FG02-98ER82523 Amount: $75,000 The cost of superconducting magnets that operate in the 10 to 12 Tesla magnetic field region can be significantly reduced if a ductile superconducting wire can be developed. The ternary superconducting alloy, NbTaTi has an upper critical field that is high enough to be used in this application, but the critical current density of wire processed by conventional methods is too low to be useful. A ternary NbTaTi superconductor that utilizes artificial pinning centers (APC) should give improved high field critical current density. The modified jelly roll (MJR) concept will be employed to generate the pinning centers. An innovative deposition method, vacuum plasma spray (VPS), will be used to create the pinner layer on a niobium-titanium expanded metal matrix. Phase I is a feasibility demonstration of the MJR approach using VPS deposited layers. If a single-core MJR structure can be successfully coated, rolled up, extruded and cold drawn, feasibility of the basic process will be confirmed. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: A high field, high current density superconducting wire could have important applications in high energy physics (HEP) accelerators. This approach has promise for producing the desired material and conventional binary superconductors in a relatively low-cost manufacturing process._