Superconducting Properties of YBaCuO Bulk Superconductors

The use of a high-temperature superconductor to manufacture products for commercialization requires a superconductor with a flexible function designed to meet the characteristics of each product. Appropriate mechanical properties need to be maintained to overcome the Lorenz force generated under high magnetic fields. Several studies focused on the improvement of superconductivity and the development of processing technology. However, high temperature superconductivity wires are not intended for large-scale applications at liquid nitrogen temperature (77 K). Recently, ceramic superconductors have been fabricated into bulk and thin films or wire rods for electric power applications; however, ceramics are hard to deform due to increased hardness, which is one of the biggest limitations of a superconductor, and a major obstacle to industrial applications. To overcome these limitations, a synthetic method for superconductivity to reduce the hardness of ceramic superconductor and prevent its degradation was proposed for applications such as superconductivity power cables and wires in energy and electric machines using superconductors.

Magnetic Properties of YBaCuO Superconductors Fabricated Using Melt Growth

YBa2Cu3O7–y (YBaCuO) superconductors used in energy storage devices are superconducting permanent magnets in bulk form. YBaCuO bulk superconductors are fabricated by interior seeded melt growth. Because the seed crystal growth is based on a slow diffusion reaction, long-term heat treatment is required to fabricate a single crystal in order to improve the magnetic properties of the bulk YBaCuO superconductor. We fabricated a single-grain bulk YBaCuO superconductor by controlling the distance between the seed and the upper surface of the YBaCuO bulk. The magnetic levitation force and trapped magnetic field were measured for the YBaCuO superconducting bulk. The correlation between the superconducting magnetic properties of the specimens and the microstructure of each crystallographic plane were evaluated.

Magnetization Method Design of Bulk Multi-Seeded High Temperature Superconductors

The potential application of bulk high temperature superconductor (HTS) magnets has attracted much attention because of the potential high trapped flux in HTS magnets. This paper focuses on the magnetization method design of bulk multi-seeded HTS magnets for obtaining their better flux-trapping performance. Firstly, three different magnetization methods were carried out based on the current experimental setup to find a better way of magnetizing a bulk melt-texture three-seeded YBaCuO superconductor. The experimental results indicated that when the three domains of this three-seeded YBaCuO bulk were magnetized in order, the maximum trapped flux was higher than that when only one domain was magnetized. However, this method costs about three times of the magnetization time than the other two methods and the increasing ratio was only about 11.11%. It has been found that another method of magnetizing only the middle domain could also get a good result such as the uniformity of trapped flux is good. In order to improve the current experimental magnetization conditions for further improvement, two sheets of iron were designed to attach two poles of the electromagnet (Lakeshore, Model EM4-CV) for increasing the magnetizing area, and that all domains of a bulk multi-seeded HTS can be magnetized in one time. Firstly, the appropriate size and thickness of the iron sheets was simulated and optimized by Comsol Multiphysics. It has been found that the magnetic field between two poles was highest when the thickness of iron was 2 mm and the length was 68 mm. Then, the simulating and optimization results had been verified by the following experiments. According to the comparison experiments, it is proved that to choose the magnetization method that only magnetizing the middle domain with the improved setup is helpful to obtain larger and more homogeneous magnetic flux for the bulk multi-seeded HTS magnet due to the added iron sheets.

INFLUENCE OF WAITING TIME ON THE LEVITATION FORCE BETWEEN A PERMANENT MAGNET AND A SUPERCONDUCTOR

This paper describes the experimental results of the levitation force of single-grained YBaCuO bulk superconductors preparing by the top-seeded melt-growth method with different waiting time tw below an NdFeB permanent magnet. It was found that waiting time has large effects on the zero-field-cooled (ZFC) and field-cooled (FC) levitation force, and the levitation force shows aging characteristics at the liquid nitrogen temperature.