China YBCO Program Advancing

Author: admin / 2005-09-11

The Applied Superconductivity Research Center at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, China, is building a reel-to-reel facility to expand it its growing expertise on YBCO coated conductor to the fabrication of longer lengths on moving substrates. To date, Tsinghua has successfully developed short samples of conductor ranging in length from between 1 to 10cml, with critical current densities of about 1.2MA/cm2 at 77K, self field, and critical currents of 20A/cm-width.

Dr. Sansheng Wang, Assistant Researcher at Tsinghua, explained the technologies that the center is exploring: “We are currently working on chemical solution methods for applying YBCO coating on RABiTS tapes, Ion Beam Assisted Deposition (IBAD) templates, Ion-beam Structure Modification (ISM) tapes, as well as Simultaneous Texture (STEX) templates.”

Tsinghua is collaborating on R&D for BSCCO and YBCO wire development with InnoST(http://www.innost.com), also in China. InnoST began HTS wire development in 2000, and reportedly has a BSCCO wire production capacity of 200km per year capacity. Innopower (http://www.innopower.com) Superconductor Cable Co., Ltd., a subsidiary company of InnoST, demonstrated a 33.5m, 3-phase, 35 kV/2 kA HTS power cable in June 2004 (see Superconductor Week Vol 18 No 8).

Funding for Tsinghua’s 2G wire program comes from China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), and from InnoST. Whether Tsinghua’s 2G wire program will remain essentially a research endeavor, or eventually spin out into the industrial sector, is not determined. Dr. Wang commented: “It is possible that we could eventually venture into the commercial market, but it will depend on many conditions that are still unknown.

-----from : superconductor week