Realising coated conductors for fusion with required performance and at lower cost

Professor Susannah Speller and Professor Judith Driscoll (University of Cambridge)

A new generation of compact fusion reactors require high temperature superconductors to generate strong magnetic fields to confine the plasma. The material of choice is REBa2Cu3O7 (REBCO) processed in the form of coated conductors that can carry enormous current densities at 20 K and 20 T required for this application. However, there is still a great deal of materials process optimisation to reliably manufacture coated conductors on the scale required for fusion. Improving yield and production speed are two key concerns, along with making further improvments to the microstructure to maximise critical current density at high field, as discussed in depth in this review article (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-021-00290-3).
There are multiple commercial suppliers of coated conductor, with Sunam offering the fastest growth process using an evaporation technique that is based on a process initiated by Prof Driscoll (University of Cambridge) many years ago. This process is now being adapted to pulsed laser deposition to ensure improved flux pinning, and hence high current densities at high fields. This new collaborative project between Cambridge and Oxford will develop optimised pinning combined with rapid fabrication and high yield. It relies on understanding the optimum precursor chemistries (a complex operation understanding pinning centre compositions and liquid phase formation) and linking them to the conductor physics.
The student based in Oxford will use scanning and transmission electron microscopy techniques to comprehensively analyse the microstructure and chemistry of the nanocomposite films grown in Cambridge using state-of-art PLD on Sunam substrates. This will provide crucial insights into how the processing parameters affect the pinning defect landscape in the REBCO films, and by correlating with measurements of superconducting properties at high field will inform the materials optimisation for improved conductor manufacture.

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