The phenomenology of high-temperature superconductive materials

Abstract

Abstract. High-temperature superconductors offer considerable promise for high current applications. Some of the relevant issues, such as materials, grain boundaries and dissipation, will be introduced and both the fundamental and practical aspects will be addressed. For example, the first generation powder-in-tube wires based on the bismuth cuprate have restricted high field performance at liquid nitrogen temperature due to the weak inter-bilayer coupling of magnetic vortices. The second generation coated conductor uses YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7 to overcome this, but it requires a high degree of biaxial texturing in order to provide notable performance in high fields in liquid nitrogen.