The MgB2 formation was analyzed physically and chemically and the MgB2/Fe wires were fabricated by powder in tube (PIT) technology. The microstructure of MgB2 in wires was studied by the scanning electrical microscope (SEM), which shows a good connection of grains and the size of MgB2 grain is 13 mm. The results of Jc measured by the standard four probes method show that Jc value reaches 6.1?04 A/cm2 at 20 K in self field.
YAN GuoFENG YongFU BaoquanLIU ChunfangJI PingZHANG PingxiangZHOU Lian
We prepared a series of MgB2 bulk samples under different temperatures, holding time and increasing rates in temperature by the solid state reaction. The thermodynamic behavior and phase formation in the Mg-B system were studied by using DTA,XRD and SEM. The results indicate that the formation of the MgB2 phase is very fast and the high increasing rate in temperature is necessary to obtain high quality MgB2. In addition, the effects of the Zr-doping in Mg1-xZrxB2 bulk samples fabricated by the solid state reaction at ambient pressure on phase compositions, microstructure and flux pinning behavior were investigated by using XRD, SQUID magnetometer, SEM and TEM. Critical current density Jc can be significantly enhanced by the Zr-doping and the best data are achieved in Mg0.9Zr0.1B2. For this sample, Jc values are remarkably improved to 1.83×106 A/cm2 in self-field and 5.51×105 A/cm2 in 1 T at 20 K. Also, high quality MgB2/Ta/Cu wires and tapes with and without Ti-doping, MgB2/Fe wires and 18 filament MgB2/NbZr/Cu tapes were fabricated by the powder-in-tube (PIT) method at ambient pressure. The phase compositions, microstructure features and flux pinning properties were studied. The results suggest that Fe is thebest metal for these sheaths. MgB2/Fe wires exhibit very high Jc at high temperatures and high fields. Jc values reach as high as 1.43×105 A/cm2 (4.2 K, 4 T) and 3.72×104 A/cm2 (15 K, 4 T).
The magnetization of dense MgB2/Ta/Cu wires prepared by the powder-in-tube method is measured by a SQUID magnetometer. The results indicate that the critical temperature of MgB2/Ta/Cu is around 38.4 K with a sharp transition width of 0.6 K. The MgB2/Ta/Cu wire shows a strong flux pinning and the critical current density is higher than 105 A/cm2 (5 K, self-field) and 104 A/cm2 (20 K, 1 T). Also, the irreversibility field of the sample reaches 6.6 T at 5 K.
FENG Yong, ZHAO Yong, A. K. Dradhan, ZHOU Lian, LIU Xianghong, Jl Ping, ZHANG Pingxiang & SUN Yuping Northwest Institute for Nonferrous Metal Research, Xi’an 710016, China
