Flexible, ultralight, porous superconducting yarns containing shell-core magnesium diboride-carbon nanotube nanofibers

Julia S Bykova; Márcio Dias Lima; Carter S Haines; Derrick Tolly; M B Salamon; Ray H Baughman; Anvar A Zakhidov

doi:10.1002/adma.201402794

Flexible, ultralight, porous superconducting yarns containing shell-core magnesium diboride-carbon nanotube nanofibers

Adv Mater. 2014 Nov 26;26(44):7510-5. doi: 10.1002/adma.201402794. Epub 2014 Oct 15.

Authors

Julia S Bykova¹, Márcio Dias Lima, Carter S Haines, Derrick Tolly, M B Salamon, Ray H Baughman, Anvar A Zakhidov

Affiliation

¹ The University of Texas at Dallas, The Alan G MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute, 800 West Campbell Road BE26, Richardson, Texas, 75080, USA; The University of Texas at Dallas, Physics Department, 800 West Campbell Road PHY36, Richardson, Texas, 75080, USA.

PMID: 25319360
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201402794

Abstract

Magnesium-diboride-coated carbon nanotube arrays are synthesized by templating carbon-nanotube aerogel sheets with boron and then converting the boron to MgB2. The resultant MgB2-CNT sheets are twisted into flexible, light-weight yarns that have a superconducting transition around 37.8 K and critical current and critical field comparable with those of existing MgB2 wires, but have about 20 times lower density than bulk MgB2.

Keywords: carbon nanotubes; magnesium diboride; nanofiber; nanowire; superconductor.