Effects of carbon concentration and filament number on advanced internal-Mg-infiltration-processed MgB2 Strands

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that advanced internal Mg infiltration (AIMI) processed MgB2 superconducting wires with optimized carbon doping and filament design achieve high critical current densities, showing promise for commercial use.

Contribution

The paper introduces optimized AIMI fabrication parameters and filament configurations that significantly enhance the critical current densities of MgB2 superconducting strands.

Findings

Highest layer Jc of 1.5 x 10^5 A/cm2 at 10 T, 4.2 K for specific doping and heat treatment.

Transport Jc of 4.3 x 10^5 A/cm2 at 5 T in 18-filament strands.

AIMI strands outperform PIT strands in critical current density, indicating commercial potential.

Abstract

An advanced internal Mg infiltration method (AIMI) in this paper has been shown to be effective in producing superconducting wires containing dense MgB2 layers with high critical current densities. In this study, the in-field critical current densities of a series of AIMI-fabricated MgB2 strands were investigated in terms of C doping levels, heat treatment (HT) time and filament numbers. The highest layer Jc for our monofilamentary AIMI strands is 1.5 x 10^5 A/cm2 at 10 T, 4.2 K, when the C concentration was 3 mol% and the strand was heat-treated at 675 {\deg}C for 4 hours. Transport critical currents were also measured at 4.2 K on short samples and one-meter segments of eighteen-filament C-doped AIMI strands. The layer Jcs reached 4.3 x 10^5 A/cm2 at 5 T and 7.1 x 10^4 A/cm2 at 10 T, twice as high as those of the best PIT strands. The analysis of these results indicates that the AIMI strands, possessing both high layer Jcs and engineering Jes after further optimization, have strong potential for commercial applications.