This summer SuperOx Japan celebrates its 10th anniversary. During these years the company demonstrated a significant evolution from the home office through the R&D pilot scale unit to the full-scale production facility. Our team developed the manufacturing process of high-temperature superconducting tapes of second generation (2G HTS) based on the electropolished Hastelloy substrate, ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) of textured buffer layers and high-speed Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) process. The typical process yields the wires of 350-600m with the Ic of 180-210 A/4mm at 77K.
In the past 2 years SuperOx Japan in collaboration with S-Innovations (Russia) has invested significant resources for development the next generation of 2G-HTS wires for high magnetic field applications and upscaled wire production facilities in Japan and Russia, aiming at the fusion, MRI, accelerator magnets and motors markets. The standard spec of such wires corresponds to the Ic of 160-230A/4mm at 20K and 20T (B//c) and 400-500 A/4mm at 4.2K, 20T. These efforts allowed the group of companies to become a world leading supplier of 2G HTS coated conductors for R&D and commercial projects. In 2021 we are planning to approach the production capacity of 1000 km/year for two companies.
This presentation will make a brief overview of the current challenges, research, and production achievements during participation in the following three projects:
1) 220 kV superconducting fault current limiter operating at 77-70K.
2) 500 kW superconducting motor for electrical aircraft (65-70K).
3) 20 Tesla superconducting magnet for fusion reactor (20K).
To meet the demands of these applications our current efforts are aimed at improving the magnetic field dependence of critical current in two operating conditions ranges: i) 4.2-20K and 20-25T and ii) 65-77K and 1-3 T.
Today our state-of-the-art wires demonstrate a record performance of critical current in a high magnetic field ea. Ic =350A/4mm at 20K, 20T and 650A at 4.2K, 20T corresponding to the engineering current densities of Je(20K,20T) = 1,765 A/mm2 and Je(4.2K,20T) = 3,300 A/mm2.
Keywords: 2G HTS, coated conductors, Ic field dependence, YBCO