Scientists Set New Superconductor World Record After Over a Decade

A world record that has stood for over a decade has now been broken. University of Cambridge engineers have managed to harness the equivalent of three tons of force inside a golf ball-sized sample of material that is normally as fragile as fine china. The newly-set superconductor record beats the previous one by .4 Tesla.

Superconductors are materials that carry electrical current with little or no resistance when cooled below a certain temperature. Although conventional superconductors need to be cooled close to absolute zero before they superconduct, high temperature superconductors can actually do so above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, which is about -196 degrees Celsius. This makes them relatively easy to cool and cheaper to operate.

The researchers actually managed to "trap" a magnetic field with a strength of 17.6 Tesla in a high temperature barium copper oxide (GdBCO) superconductor. That's about 100 times stronger than the field generated by a typical fridge magnet.

The new record was achieved using 25 mm diameter samples of GdBCO high temperature superconductor fabricated in the form of a large, single grain using an established melt processing method and reinforced using a relatively simple technique. The previous record of 17.2 Tesla used a highly specialized type of superconductor of a similar composition.

"The fact that this record has stood for so long shows just how demanding this field really is," said David Cardwell, who lead the research, in a news release. "There are real potential gains to be had with every small increase in the field."

Superconductors are currently used in scientific and medical applications, such as MRI scanners. In the future, they could also be used to protect the national grid and increase energy efficiency, due to the amount of electrical current they carry without losing energy.

"This work could herald the arrival of superconductors in real-world applications," said Cardwell. "In order to see bulk superconductors applied for everyday use, we need large grains of superconducting material with the required properties that can be manufactured by relatively standard processes."

The findings are published in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology.