Fabrication and properties of single domain GdBCO superconducting rings by a buffer aided Gd+011 TSIG method

Abstract

Single domain REBCO bulk superconductors can be fabricated by both the top-seeded melt texture growth process and the top-seeded infiltration and growth (TSIG) process. The buffer pellet technique used in these two methods has been demonstrated to act as an efficient seed and to aid the growth of the REBCO bulk superconductors. In this paper, we combined the Gd+011 TSIG method and buffer pellet technique together to fabricate single domain REBCO superconducting rings without any machining and obvious shrinkage of the final ring, which shows a satisfactory trapped field and very good magnetic shielding at the same time. It is found that (1) a single domain GdBCO ring, with inner diameter of 10 mm and outer diameter of 32 mm, has been fabricated by this method successfully. (2) The trapped field (0.32 T, 77 K) and maximum levitation force (80.1 N, 77 K) of the single domain GdBCO ring are nearly the same as the trapped field (0.33 T, 77 K) and maximum levitation force (80.2 N, 77 K) of the single domain GdBCO bulk with the same diameter and thickness, but the uniformity of trapped field is much better for the single domain GdBCO ring. (3) The single domain GdBCO ring shows very good magnetic shielding property, the magnetic flux density shielded by the superconducting ring is up to 0.40 T at 77 K, which is much higher than that of reported samples. The results indicate that the buffer aided Gd+011 TSIG method can provide an important way to fabricate high quality single domain REBCO superconducting rings directly.