Earticle

Heart consists of myocardium cells and the electrophysiological activity of the cells generate magnetic fields. By measuring this magnetic field, magnetocardiogram (MCG), functional diagnosis of the heart diseases is possible. Since the strength of the MCG signals is weak, typically in the range of 1-10 pT, we need sensitive magnetic sensors. Conventionally, superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUID)s were used for the detection of MCG signals due to its superior sensitivity to other magnetic sensors. However, drawback of the SQUID is the need for regular refill of a cryogenic liquid, typically liquid helium for cooling lowtemperature SQUIDs. Efforts to eliminate the need for the refill in the SQUID system have been done by using cryocooler-based conduction cooling or use of non-cryogenic sensors, or room-temperature sensors. Each sensor has advantage and disadvantage, in terms of magnetic field sensitivity and complexity of the system, and we review the recent trend of MCG technology.

Since the discovery of superconductivity, the unique and mysterious phenomenon has been observed in various metallic material systems. Now days, the superconductivity becomes ubiquitous because almost every metallic material system shows the superconductivity when it is cooled down enough. This ubiquity of the superconductivity is associated with the fermionic nature and itinerancy of electrons in metallic materials. Because fermions are governed by the Pauli’s exclusion principle the total energy of fermions is much larger than that of bosons. Therefore, fermionic itinerant electrons are fundamentally instable. Itinerant electrons are able to find “a way” to lead them to their lowest possible energy state through an available bosonization (or pairing) process and Bose-Einstein condensation. Therefore, the lowest possible energy state of itinerant electrons will be a superconducting state, which is “their ultimate destination”. This may explain the reason why the superconductivity is ubiquitous.

High-quality superconducting coplanar waveguide (SCPW) resonators are crucial for developing superconducting quantum information devices and sensors. We designed quarter-wavelength SCPW resonators and fabricated the SCPW resonators using Nb thin film. The resonant characteristics were measured at T = 4.2 K, revealing the intrinsic quality factor and the coupling quality factor to be Qi = 4,784 and Qc = 17, 980, respectively. Our design and fabrication techniques would be very useful to develop a gate-tunable superconducting qubit based on the semiconductor nanostructures.

Here we present the comparative experimental study of the stability of the superconducting state in 4 mm YBCO tapes with copper lamination against local heat disturbances at 77 K. The samples are either directly cooled by immersing a bare YBCO tape into a liquid nitrogen pool or operate in nearly-adiabatic conditions when the tape is covered by a 0.6 mm layer of Kapton insulation. Main quench characteristics, i.e. minimum quench energies (MQEs) and normal zone propagation (NZP) velocities for both samples are measured and compared. Minimum NZP currents are determined by a low ohmic resistor technique eligible for obtaining V - I curves with a negative differential resistance. The region of transport currents satisfying the stationary stability criterion is found for the different cooling conditions. Finally, we use the critical temperature margin as a universal scaling parameter to compare the MQEs obtained in this work for YBCO tapes at 77 K with those taken from literature for low-temperature superconductors in vacuum at 4.2 K, as well as for MgB2 wires cooled with a cryocooler down to 20 K.

Among many variables in processing the high performance MgB2 bulk superconductors, simple and important approach is to optimize the size dependence of the Mg & B raw powders. The present study is dedicated towards the variation in superconducting properties of MgB2 depending upon the various combination of Mg & B powders with the two different particle sizes respectively. From morphological investigation of the MgB2 samples, narrow and long pores are observed when the largerMg powders are used, whereas it is rather like the oval shapes with the smallerMg powders. Also, it can be seen that the connectivity of the MgB2 samples is much enhanced with the smaller size of the B powders. Jc-H properties of the MgB2 samples also indicate that the highest Jc can be obtained when using the smaller size of the B powder with the combination of the smallerMg powders than that of the larger Mg powders. If the cases with the larger B powers, it is more favorable to select the larger Mg powders with the better Jc-H properties considering shorter diffusion length of Mg and more homogeneous mixture between the Mg & B powders.

The test results of the ITER toroidal field conductors demonstrated a decrease of the current sharing temperature (Tcs) with an increase in the number of electromagnetic cycles in general. This is associating with several factors. One of them is the superconducting Nb3Sn filaments cracking and another one is the redistribution of the relative deformation of the Nb3Sn strands under Lorentz forces. Despite these factors, some conductors have shown the absence or significantly less degradation of Tcs during electromagnetic cycling. This article considers another possible reason for a more stable conductors Tcs behavior, namely, the local compression of Nb3Sn wires in the cross section of a conductor. In this article presents the results of a quantitative analysis Nb3Sn superconducting filaments cracking of strands extracted from a conductor that has passed electromagnetic cycling and the model of a conductor compaction, as well as calculation results based on this model are presented also.

Power cables made of high temperature superconductors (HTS) are considered as most advanced applications of superconductivity for electro-energetics. Several cables made of the First Generation (1G) HTS wires have been produced and installed to electrical grids worldwide. Power cables made of the Second Generation HTS wires (2G or Coated Conductors) are in active development. Most basic principles of HTS power cables development have been published in many works since 90-ties. In this Review we would like to present our new developments mostly directed to 2G HTS compact power cables. We are presenting the methods to optimize a design of 2G AC compact power cable providing uniform current distribution among cable layers and the production technology approaches to implement such a design. AC losses measurements in such cables and other test methods are described. Some problems of the development 2G HTS power cables with small diameters are discussed. We presented as examples designs, developments and test results of two major coaxial cables designs: single-phase (cable core and a shield) and three-phase (triaxial: with three coaxial phases).

This paper describes the real operation of 2 kW class reverse-Brayton refrigeration system with neon as a working fluid. The refrigeration cycle is designed with operating pressure of 0.5 and 1.0 MPa at low and high pressure side, respectively. Compressor package consists of several helium scroll compressors witch are originally used for driving GM cryocooler. Three segments of plate heat exchanger are adopted to cover the wide temperature range and the refrigeration power is produced by turbo expander. The developed refrigeration system is successfully operated at its target temperature of 77 K. In experiments, all parameters such as pressure, temperature, mass flow rate and valve opening are measured to investigate characteristics during cool-down process and normal state. The difference between design and real operation is discussed with measured experimental data. At normal state of 77 K operation, the developed reverse-Brayton refrigeration system shows 1.83 kW at 68.2 K of cold-end temperature.

In this research, the variation of round-trip efficiency in a liquid air energy storage system (LAES) is calculated and an optimal configuration is found. The multiple stages of cold energy storage are simulated with several materials that process latent heat at different temperature ranges. The effectiveness in the charging and discharging processes of LAES is newly defined, and its relationship with the round-trip efficiency is examined. According to defined correlation, the effectiveness of the discharging process significantly affects the overall system performance. The round-trip efficiency is calculated for the combined cold energy storage materials of aqueous dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) solution, ethanol, and pentane theoretically. The performance of LAES varies depending on the freezing point of the cold storage materials. In particular, when the LAES uses several cold storage materials, those materials whose freezing points are close to room temperature and liquid air temperature should be included in the cold storage materials. In this paper, it is assumed that only latent heat is used for cold energy storage, but for more realistic analyzes, the additional consideration of the transient thermal situation to utilize sensible heat is required. In the case of such a dynamic system, since there is certainly more increased heat capacity of the entire storage system, the volume of the cold energy storage system will be greatly reduced.

In order to increase thrust of the space launch vehicle, liquid oxygen as an oxidizer and kerosene or liquid hydrogen as a fuel are generally used. The oxidizer tank and fuel tanks are manufactured by composite materials such as CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic) to increase pay load. The thermal stress of the cryogenic propellant tank should be considered because it has large temperature gradient. In this study, to confirm the design integrity of the oxidizer tank of liquid oxygen, a numerical analysis was conducted on the thermal stress and temperature distribution of the tank for various charging speed of the cryogenic fluid from 100 ~ 900 LPM taking into account the evaporation rate of the liquid nitrogen by convective heat transfer outside the tank and boiling heat transfer inside the tank. The thermal stress was also calculated coupled with the temperature distribution of the CFRP tank. Based on the analysis results, the charging speed of the LN2 can majorly affects the charging time and the resultant thermal stress.

Cooling by gas helium circulation can be used for various HTS (high temperature superconductor) magnets operating at 20~40 K, and a cryogenic blower is an essential device for circulating gas helium in the cooling system. The performance of the cryogenic blower is determined by various design parameters such as the impeller diameter, the blade number, the vane angle, the volute cross-sectional area, and the rotating speed. The trailing edge angle and the height of impeller vane are also key design factors in determining the blower performance. This study describes the design, fabrication and performance evaluation of cryogenic blower to produce a flow rate of 30 g/s at 5 bar, 35 K gas helium. The impeller shape is designed using a specific speed/specific diameter diagram and CFD analysis. After the fabrication of the cryogenic blower, a test equipment is also developed using a GM cryocooler. The measured flow rates and the pressure differences are compared with the design values at various rotating speeds and the results show a good agreement. Isentropic efficiency is also evaluated using the measured pressures and temperatures.

We fabricated superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) based on Nb Josephson junctions, and characterized the key parameters of the SQUIDs. The SQUIDs are double relaxation oscillation SQUIDs (DROSs) having larger flux-to-voltage transfer coefficient than the standard DC-SQUIDs. SQUID sensors were fabricated by using Nb junction technology consisted of a DC magnetron sputtering and a conventional photolithography process. In multichannel SQUID systems for whole-head magnetoencephalography measurement with a helmet-type SQUID array, we need about 336 SQUID sensors for each system. In this paper, we fabricated a few hundred SQUID sensors, measured the critical current, flux modulation voltage and decided if each tested SQUID can be used for the multichannel systems. As the criterion for the acceptance of the sensors, we chose the critical current and amplitude of the modulation voltage to be 8 ㎂ and 80 ㎶, respectively. The average critical current of the SQUIDs was 10.58 ㎂. The typical flux noise of the SQUIDs with input coil shorted was 2 μΦ0/√Hz at white region.