Los Alamos announces agreement to develop second-generation superconductor tapes

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 17, 2000 -- The Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory announced today, in cooperation with Argonne National Laboratory, the signing of a cooperative research and development agreement with Intermagnetics General Corporation of Latham, New York. The 3-year, $2.5 million agreement will focus on coating technologies developed for producing second-generation high-temperature superconducting tape.

IGC has the first right to negotiate an exclusive license within a field of use, for reasonable terms and conditions, to inventions made by Los Alamos and Argonne arising under this agreement. An additional provision is that technology developed under the agreement with LANL and ANL can be proprietary to IGC for a period of five years.

The high-temperature superconducting, or HTS, material will be deposited on a nickel-alloy base instead of utilizing the more expensive silver alloy needed for first-generation bismuth-based superconductors. Both Los Alamos and Argonne national laboratories will assist IGC in scaling the process to manufacturing levels.

As early as 1995, researchers from Los Alamos' Superconductivity Technology Center developed methods that produced HTS coatings on centimeter lengths of flexible metal tapes which, when cooled to the liquid nitrogen temperature, carried an electrical current density greater than one million amperes per square centimeter. Los Alamos has since been able to extend the tapes to meter lengths, far exceeding other efforts in the worldwide race to develop high-temperature superconductors for electrical applications.

"This collaboration," said Dean Peterson of the Superconductivity Technology Center, "is an exciting opportunity to accelerate commercial production of HTS tapes that will enable efficient power applications." Several studies have shown that the electric utility industry would save billions of dollars in energy costs by implementing HTS for such devices as transmission cables, transformers, motors, generators and fault current controllers, Peterson said.

Superconductivity, a state characterized by the absence of electrical resistance, initially had required cooling to 'low' temperatures near absolute zero -- approximately minus-452 degrees Fahrenheit -- requiring the use of expensive liquid-helium coolants and exotic insulation systems to prevent heat leakage into the device.

"High-temperature" superconductivity or HTS, discovered in the mid-1980s, provides the same characteristics at much higher relative operating temperatures -- about minus-322 degrees Fahrenheit or near the temperature of boiling liquid nitrogen -- that dramatically reduces the complexity and operating cost while improving efficiency.

Several manufacturers are now producing kilometer lengths of the first generation of HTS wires, based on bismuth material, for use in electrical transmission cables. However, due to poor performance in strong magnetic fields, use of this type of HTS wire for motors, transformers, and generator coils is limited to relatively low temperatures.

The second generation of HTS-coated conductors is much less affected by strong magnetic fields, and these materials are being intensely developed by government, industry and university research laboratories around the world.

Through the agreement announced today, IGC, Los Alamos and Argonne officials hope that continued process improvements will make it possible to commercially produce kilometer lengths of the new HTS coated conductors on flexible metal substrates at the price-performance levels needed for numerous applications.

The Superconductivity Technology Center at Los Alamos has developed ion-beam-assisted and pulsed-laser deposition technologies for producing thin films of HTS compounds on a nickel alloy base. Intermagnetics' challenges are to develop manufacturing facilities for high-speed film deposition and to scale-up processes for producing kilometer lengths of HTS tape. In addition to assisting IGC in acquiring and implementing the coating technologies, Los Alamos will provide electrical characterization of the IGC coatings while Argonne assesses their microstructural qualities.

As an indicator of increased international competition in HTS, both the Japanese International Superconductivity Technology Center and a European Community alliance recently announced optimistic program goals to develop and commercialize production of second-generation HTS-coated conductors.

Intermagnetics General Corporation is a leading developer and manufacturer of superconducting materials, radio-frequency coils, magnets and devices utilizing low- and high-temperature superconducting wire, cable and tape, and related refrigeration equipment.

Argonne National Laboratory is operated by the University of Chicago for the Department of Energy (DOE). The DOE Superconductivity Centers at both institutions receive support from the DOE Superconductivity Program Office of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

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