The fusion power density produced in a tokamak is proportional to its magnetic field strength to the fourth power. Second-generation high temperature superconductor (2G HTS) wires demonstrate remarkable engineering current density (averaged over the full wire), JE, at very high magnetic fields, driving progress in fusion and other applications. The key challenge for HTS wires has been to offer an acceptable combination of high and consistent superconducting performance in high magnetic fields, high volume supply, and low price. Here we report a very high and reproducible JE in practical HTS wires based on a simple YBa2Cu3O7 (YBCO) superconductor formulation with Y2O3 nanoparticles, which have been delivered in just nine months to a commercial fusion customer in the largest-volume order the HTS industry has seen to date. We demonstrate a novel YBCO superconductor formulation without the c-axis correlated nano-columnar defects that are widely believed to be prerequisite for high in-field performance. The simplicity of this new formulation allows robust and scalable manufacturing, providing, for the first time, large volumes of consistently high performance wire, and the economies of scale necessary to lower HTS wire prices to a level acceptable for fusion and ultimately for the widespread commercial adoption of HTS.

We report comprehensive study of physical properties of the binary superconductor compound SnAs. The electronic band structure of SnAs was investigated using both angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) in a wide binding energy range and density functional theory (DFT) within generalized gradient approximation (GGA). The DFT/GGA calculations were done including spin-orbit coupling for both bulk and (111) slab crystal structures. Comparison of the DFT/GGA band dispersions with ARPES data shows that (111) slab much better describes ARPES data than just bulk bands. Superconducting properties of SnAs were studied experimentally by specific heat, magnetic susceptibility, magnetotransport measurements and Andreev reflection spectroscopy. Temperature dependences of the superconducting gap and of the specific heat were found to be well consistent with those expected for the single band BCS superconductors with an isotropic s-wave order parameter. Despite spin-orbit coupling is present in SnAs, our data shows no signatures of a potential unconventional superconductivity, and the characteristic BCS ratio 2∆/Tc = 3.48 − 3.73 is very close to the BCS value in the weak coupling limit.

In BCS-type superconductors Zr N B 12 (T C ≈ 6 K) and Lu N B 12 (T C ≈ 0.42 K) heat capacity C(T ) and magnetization measurements have been carried out on high quality single crystals with various boron isotopes (with N = 10, 11, and with natural composition of 10 B and 11 B). Parameters of the superconducting and normal states have been deduced from this study, allowing comparison between these two dodecaborides. It was shown that ZrB 12 is a type-II superconductor in which the Ginzburg-Landau parameter varies in the range κ = 0.8-1.12. A detailed analysis of specific heat in the normal state of R 10 B 12 , R 11 B 12 and R nat B 12 (where R = Zr, Lu) has revealed three Einstein type vibration modes of Zr 4+ -ions in ZrB 12 with characteristic energies θ E1 (Zr N B 12 ) ≈ 200 K and θ E2,3 (Zr N B 12 ) ≈ 450 K, N. Sluchanko ( ) •

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The superconducting and normal state characteristics of yttrium hexaboride (YB6) have been investigated for the single crystals with a transition temperatures Tc ranging between 6 K and 7.6 K. The extracted set of microscopic parameters [the coherence length ξ(0) ∼ 320÷340Å, the penetration depth λ(0) ∼ 1100÷1600Å and the mean free path of charge carriers l = 31÷58Å, the Ginzburg-Landau-Maki parameters κ1,2(0) ∼ 3.3÷4.8 and the superconducting gap ∆(0) ∼ 10.3÷14.8 K] confirms the type II superconductivity in "dirty limit" (ξ≫l ) with a medium to strong electron-phonon interaction (the electron-phonon interaction constant λ e-ph = 0.93÷0.96) and s-type pairing of charge carriers in this compound [2∆(0)/kB Tc ≈ 4]. The comparative analysis of charge transport (resistivity, Hall and Seebeck coefficients) and thermodynamic (heat capacity, magnetization) properties in the normal state in YB6 allowed to detect a transition into the cageglass state at T * ∼ 50 K with a static disorder in the arrangement of the Y 3+ ions. We argue that the significant Tc variations in the YB6 single crystals are determined by two main factors: (i ) the superconductivity enhancement is related with the increase of the number of isolated vacancies, both at yttrium and boron sites, which leads to the development of an instability in the hexaboride lattice; (ii ) the Tc depression is additionally stimulated by the spin polarization of conduction electrons emerged and enhanced by the magnetic field in the vicinity of defect complexes in the YB6 matrix.