Venkat Selvamanickam1
University of Houston1
High current (10-100 kA) cables are needed for magnets operating at 20 T and above for fusion, particle accelerators and other ultra-high magnetic field applications. The number of tape stands required for these cables can be greatly reduced using high critical current REBCO tapes – this is important given the high cost and limited production volume of REBCO. We have demonstrated REBCO tapes with critical currents as high as 1,836 A/4 mm at 4.2 K, 20 T using Advanced Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (A-MOCVD), which is more than 3x and 5x the critical current of the best and typical industry REBCO tapes respectively. We have recently scaled up our A-MOCVD technology to 50-meter lengths to repeatedly produce uniform and high <i>I<sub>c</sub> </i>tapes. Our high-current tapes have been utilized to make round REBCO STAR® wires that exhibit engineering current density of ~ 600 A/mm<sup>2</sup> at 4.2 K, 30 T. At the extreme conditions of ultra-high magnetic fields, the high-current REBCO conductors experience immense mechanical forces which generally limit the maximum operating fields of the magnets. Higher strength architectures are being developed to utilize the high-current capabilities of our advanced REBCO conductors in magnetic fields of 20 T and above.<br/><br/>This work was supported by awards from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Manufacturing Office, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and SBIR awards from the U.S. Department of Energy and Naval and Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).