Economical production of high performance MgB2 superconductor with improved grain connectivity

The discovery of superconductivity in MgB2, a binary intermetallic, by Jun Akimitsu in Japan created huge among the scientific community in applied superconductivity research. Extensive researches have been carried out throughout the last decade to make it viable for practical application. It is considered as the potential candidate for replacing conventional low temperature superconductors (LTS) and high temperature superconductors (HTS) due its remarkable properties, such as comparatively high critical temperature of 39 K, simple crystalline structure, weak link free grain boundaries, low materials cost. Soaring helium price is a serious threat to LTS. On the other hand, more than 20 years of efforts did not reduce the production cost of HTS. In addition, larger coherence length and lower anisotropy make MgB2 competitive with HTS. Therefore, MgB2 is technologically and economically viable conductor than LTS and HTS.