High-temperature superconductors: underlying physics and applications

Abstract

Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by Kamerlingh Onnes and Holst in mercury at the temperature of liquid helium (4.2 K). It took almost 50 years until in 1957 a microscopic theory of superconductivity, the so-called BCS theory, was developed. Since the discovery a number of superconducting materials were found with transition temperatures up to 23 K. A breakthrough in the field happened in 1986 when Bednorz and Müller discovered a new class of superconductors, the so-called cuprate high-temperature superconductors with transition temperatures as high as 135 K. This surprising discovery initiated new efforts with respect to fundamental physics, material science, and technological applications. In this brief review the basic physics of the conventional low-temperature superconductors as well as of the high-temperature superconductors are presented with a brief introduction to applications exemplified from high-power to low-power electronic devices. Finally, a short outlook and future challenges are presented, finished with possible imaginations for applications of room-temperature superconductivity.

High Temperature Superconductors

“…Improvement in low-power technologies like SQUIDS, detectors, filters, and sensors is also expected with the use of RT superconductors which would bring revolutionary changes in medical and information technology. Lastly, realization of compact High Temperature Superconductors DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96419 and efficient quantum and Josephson computers will also become possible with this novel technology [59,63,106,107].…”

High Temperature Superconductivity: A Prospective Remedy for Energy Crisis in Future

“…In 2001 Japanese scientist Akimitsu and his team discovered a superconductivity on MgB 2 which has a T c of 40K. It was an exciting event to have superconductivity on cheap and simple compound [4]. In late 2007, Hideo Hosono and coworkers announced the discovery of high temperature superconductivity in pnictide.…”

“…Like copper oxide superconductor, iron pnictide also have layered structure. Furthermore, both of them are magnetic and achieve superconducting properties after optimal chemical doping [4].…”

“…Figure 5 shows the comparison of transmission losses in a superconducting and conventional cable for 66KV, 3KA, 350MW power, the loss of superconducting cable is about 50% of the conventional cable. Besides this, no load losses in HTS are larger in comparison to losses in conventional cable, therefore superconducting cable are appropriate for major cities , bussiness and industrial area where high load are connected for large part of time [4,9,12,15,19].…”

“…Superconducting magnetic energy storage is one of the energy storing technology which is used to store the spare energy in superconducting coils as a magnetic field. In addition, the magnetic levitating train use a superconducting magnet which unlike conventional trains are highly efficient and avoid energy losses from friction [3,4,16].…”