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Cables made of MgB2 superconductors are currently explored as a viable solution for transporting high electrical power in the AC regime. In order to be competitive against the DC solution, the cables need to have an acceptable level of AC losses. In this contribution, we discuss the main aspects relevant for designing a cable with a sufficiently low AC loss level. To this end, we perform finite-element-method (FEM) simulations to determine the current and field distributions and calculate the AC losses of such cable configuration. For current capacities of 2-5 kA (peak), power cables are assembled from a relatively small number of MgB2 strands. The performance of such cables strongly depends on the current and field distributions, which are in turn influenced by the number and the arrangement of the superconducting components and also by the magnetic properties of supporting materials. Numerical simulations can help to test different cable configurations and provide important insights for optimizing the cable's design. The numerical model includes the field dependence of the superconductor's critical current density Jc(B) as well as the non-linear properties of magnetic materials.

Upper critical fields of several magnesium diboride thin films were measured up to 28 T at the Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory (GHMFL) in Grenoble and up to 60 T at the Laboratoire National des Champs Magnetiques Pulses (LNCMP) in Toulouse. The samples were prepared both by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and hybrid physical chemical vapour deposition (HPCVD) technique; they have critical temperatures between 29 and 39 K and normal state resistivities between 5 and 250 μohmcm; one of them has been intentionally doped with carbon. The measured critical fields were exceptionally high; we obtained the record value of 52 T at 4.2 K in the parallel orientation. In contrast with the BCS predictions, no saturation in Hc2 at low temperature was observed. Furthermore, films with a wide range of resistivity values showed similar critical fields, suggesting that in a two band system resistivity and Hc2 are not trivially linked. The high Hc2 values seem to be related with the expanded c-axis. The structure of one of the samples was carefully investigated with X-ray diffraction at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Presented at ASC 2004

Superconducting thin films of MgB2 were deposited by Pulsed Laser Deposition on magnesium oxide and sapphire substrates. Samples grown at 450C in an argon buffer pressure of about 10-2 mbar by using a magnesium enriched target resulted to be superconducting with a transition temperature of about 25 K. Film deposited from a MgB2 sintered pellet target in ultra high vacuum conditions showed poor metallic or weak semiconducting behavior and they became superconducting only after an ex-situ annealing in Mg vapor atmosphere. Up to now, no difference in the superconducting properties of the films obtained by these two procedures has been evidenced., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

The Powder-In-Tube process has been employed to fabricate tape-like conductors with a strong metallic sheath and based on the newly discovered MgB2 superconducting phase. Long superconducting tapes have been prepared by packing reacted MgB2 powders inside pure Ag, Cu and Ni tubes which are then cold worked by drawing and rolling. Such tapes have shown transport properties as good as bulk MgB2 samples sintered in high pressure and high temperature conditions. At 4.2 K, the highest critical current density of 100000 A/cm2 has been achieved on Nickel-sheathed single-filament conductors. A direct correlation between the sheath tensile strength and the critical current of the unsintered tape has been observed., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures; submitted to Appl. Phys. Lett. Received April 3, 2001