Fabrication of Nb3Al superconducting wires by utilizing the mechanically alloyed Nb(Al)ss supersaturated solid-solution with low-temperature annealing

Abstract High-performance Nb 3 Al superconducting wire is a promising candidate to the application of high-field magnets. However, due to the production problem of km-grade wires that are free from low magnetic field instability, the Nb 3 Al wires made by rapid heating, quenching and transformation (RHQT) are still not available to the large-scale engineering application. In this paper, we reported the properties of the in situ powder-in-tube (PIT) Nb 3 Al superconducting wires, which were made by using the mechanically alloyed Nb(Al) ss supersaturated solid solution, as well as the low temperature heat-treatment at 800 °C for 10 h. The results show that Nb 3 Al superconductors in this method possess very fine grains and well superconducting properties, though a little of Nb 2 Al and Nb impurities still keep being existence at present work. At the Nb 3 Al with a nominal 26 at.% Al content, the onset T c reaches 15.8 K. Furthermore, a series of Nb 3 Al wires and tapes with various sizes have been fabricated; for the 1.0 mm-diameter wire, the J c at 4.2 K, 10 T and 14 T have achieved 12,700 and 6900 A/cm 2 , respectively. This work suggests it is possible to develop high-performance Cu-matrix Nb 3 Al superconducting wires by directly using the Nb(Al) ss supersaturated solid-solution without the complex RHQT heat-treatment process.