Superconducting materials stand in the front of present theoretical and application physics, due to their practical applicability. Superconducting tapes of the second generation possess much higher critical currents and irreversibility fields than classical metallic superconductors and any other nowadays known materials. In this way the cuprate superconducting tapes provide high safety margins for operation in any of their applications.
The main research topic has been the response of high-TC superconducting tapes intended for magnet coils wiring in future thermonuclear fusion reactors to neutron irradiation. Set of 22 tapes from 4 main world suppliers were tested inductively in the intact state. The data provide the optimistic evidence that the best tapes are able to carry a sufficient critical current up to 15 T, provided they are cooled to temperatures below 30 K. Importantly, the temperature range 5-30 K is nowadays accessible by cryogen-free refrigerator cooling, which offers a much more economic operation than cooling of classical superconductors into the superconducting state by liquid helium.
Related research topic is the vortex dynamics and vortex matter behavior in type II superconductors [Janu2017a]. Fitting the experimental data to theoretical curves allowed contact-less estimation of the critical depinning current density and its temperature dependence.
