HIGH TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTORS

First Two RABITS™ Patents Issued

 

The first two United States Patents on Oak Ridge National Laboratory's rolling-assisted, biaxially textured substrates (RABiTS™) for high-temperature superconducting wire technology have issued. Patent number 5,739,086 issued on April 14, 1998, and number 5,741,377 issued on April 21, 1998. The patents describe a biaxially textured article that includes a rolled and annealed, biaxially textured substrate of a metal having a face-centered cubic, body-centered cubic, or hexagonal close-packed crystalline structure, and an epitaxial superconductor or other device epitaxially deposited thereon. RABiTS™ provides the template upon which YBCO and other superconductors, or precursors to superconductors, may be deposited. The RABiTS™ structure presently being used by ORNL and some of its partners consists of rolled-and-annealed nickel, followed by one or more buffer layers. ORNL has demonstrated critical current densities of up to 3 MA/cm2 for YBCO films deposited by pulsed laser deposition on short samples (measured in self field, at 77 K). Recently, in collaboration with 3M Company, Southwire Company, and LANL, ORNL demonstrated ex-situ growth of YBCO films by the "barium fluoride" electron beam evaporation process on RABiTS™ with critical current densities around 1.5 million A/cm2. The work was done with funding provided by the U.S. DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Utility Technologies, and by the Office of Energy Research, Division of Materials Science.

For more technical information call David K Christen at (865) 574-6269

For information about collaborative R&D opportunities: call Dominic Lee (865) 241-0775

or email Cookie Murphy at murphyaw@ornl.gov

ORNL Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program Home Page

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Updated 9/14/00