RECORD BREAKING SUPERCONDUCTOR SHOWS GREAT POTENTIAL

Cambridge Research Team Trap A Magnetic Field of 17.6 Tesla

A research group at Cambridge University in Britain has set a new record by trapping a magnetic field of 17.6 Tesla. The team of researchers created a new type of high temperature superconductor (HTS) which they used to break the previous record, that had stood for ten years. Scientists and engineers are extremely interested in HTS due to their applications in intelligent large-scale electricity grids, maglev trains and flywheel energy storage.

Superconductors are a group of materials including mercury, aluminium and lead which, when cooled down to temperatures approaching absolute zero (-273°C), are capable of conducting electricity with zero resistance. These materials are used to create electromagnets that are found inside MRI machines, mass spectrometers and maglev trains. They could one day be used to drastically improve the efficiency of the power grid by enabling large amounts of electricity to be carried with minimum loss.

High-temperature superconductors are a new class of superconductors, discovered in the 1980’s, which are very useful for real-world applications as they are cheaper and easier to operate. The researchers at Cambridge set the new record using a golf ball-sized sample of gadolinium barium copper oxide (GdBCO), a high-temperature conductor.