Texture characterization of powder-in-tube Ti/MgB2superconducting cables

M. MELONE; A. CABRERA; M.T. MALACHEVSKY; F. MALAMUD; P. VIZCAINO; D. BIANCHI; A. SERQUIS

Bariloche

Simposio; SLAFES XXIII; 2018

The MgB2 superconductor has great potential for technological applications based on its critical temperature Tc (39 K), low cost of the raw materials, chemical simplicity and low anisotropy. Powder-in-Tube (PIT) is the most used method to obtain superconducting cables due to its brittleness. In this work, we employed grade 2 titanium as sheath material and a mixture of 95 at% MgB2 (325 mesh, Alfa Aesar) and 5 at% SiC (20-30 nm) to assemble the superconducting cables. The set was laminated and / or drawn to decrease its diameter [1]. Several configurations were mounted in order to achieve better mechanical stability and flexibility from the obtained cables. The starting filaments are placed in a compact array within a titanium sheath and the rolling and / or drawing process is repeated with intermediate recrystallization heat treatments. The starting filament was drawn with a hexagonal cross section to maximize compaction of the multifilamentary cable. Cables were prepared with arrangements of 7, 19 and 37 filaments. We evaluated the titanium tube for the presence of texture induced by the deformation during drawing using XRD pole figures. We compared the state of the monofilamentary cable sheath with that of the multifilamentary cables to determine the effect of a greater degree of deformation arising from the thermomechanical treatment. The critical current density of the cables was eva-luated using a SQUID magnetometer.