Superconducting Materials Advances In Technology And Applications Proceedings Of The International Advanced School Leonardo Da Vinci 1998 Summer Course

This volume consists of lectures highlighting fundamentals of advances in superconducting materials, related technologies and applications. Theory, fundamental aspects, advances in materials synthesis, processing and properties are featured, as well as current developments of superconducting components and devices.Both HTC and LTC superconducting materials are discussed. Several years after the discovery of high Tc superconductivity and a multinational effort in its study, this book collects the main results on the subject and presents a state-of-the-art view of the correlations between crystal chemistry and physical properties.

Five years have passed since the breakthrough in the critical temperature for superconductors. During this period, many superconducting materials have been discovered and developed, and our knowledge of the physical and other properties of oxide superconductors has deepened through extensive and intensive research. This knowledge has advanced superconductivity science and technology from the initial questioning stage to a more developed but still uncertain second stage where research activity in superconductivity now overlaps with fields of application. Generally speaking, science resonates with technology. Science not only complements but also competes with or stimulates technology. New scientific knowledge has triggered the second technological research stage. Much progress has been made in the development of practical devices, encouraging the application of superconductors in areas such as human levitation, a high speed levitated bearing, large current transforming leads, and high frequency devices. This technological progress has increased our understanding of the science involved, such as flux pinning and dynamics, and anomalous long-range superconducting interactions. At this important stage, international cooperation and collaborative projects can effectively sustain aggressive research and development in order to advance superconductivity to the next stages. The ISS Symposium is expected to serve as a venue for increasing our knowledge of superconductivity and for exchanging visions for future research and applications, through the presentation and discus of the latest research results. These proceedings also aim to summarize sion annual progress in high-Tc superconductivity in all fields.

The International Symposium on Superconductivity, which has been held annu ally since 1988, is a forum for presenting the most up-to-date information about a broad range of research and development in superconductivity, from funda mental aspects to applications. More than 10 years have passed since the discovery of oxide superconductors and since various developments of applications began. It may be said that the prospects for application of oxide superconductors recently have opened up. Great progress has been made toward practical use, for example, of the flywheel, which uses bulk materials, and the high-performance cryo-cooled magnet made of bismuth wire. These were the results of persistent efforts to develop materials from the viewpoint of materials science and engineering. Also important is the progress in comprehensive understanding of high temperature superconductivity. Unique electronic properties of cuprates such as the non-Fermi liquid normal state, spin-charge separation, spin gap, and d-wave symmetry were discussed at the symposium, as were the unique electromagnetic properties resulting from the low dimensionality of cuprates. In the field of new superconductors, many exotic materials have been discovered since 1986. A decade of work with cuprate superconductors is reviewed in this proceedings, and several of the newest materials are presented. These papers will be instructive for many researchers and for students who are to enter this field.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 2004 University of Miami Workshop on Unconventional Superconductivity. The workshop was the fourth in a series of successful meetings on High-T Superconductivity and C related topics, which took place at the James L. Knight Physics Building on the University of Miami campus in Coral Gables, Florida, in January 1991, 1995, 1999, and 2004. The workshop consisted of two consecutive events: 1. NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on New Challenges in Superconductivity: Experimental Advances and Emerging Theories, held on January 11-14, 2004; 2. Symposium on Emerging Mechanisms for High Temperature Superconductivity (SEMHTS), held on January 15-16, 2004. It is hard to write a balanced preface to a volume like this one, yet at least we try to offer the reader a taste of what was happening in this workshop. There were close to a hundred scientists from around the world, albeit fewer Russians than we had originally hoped for. Nevertheless, the workshop was very lively and we trust that this is demonstrated in this volume. The workshop included high-quality presentations on state of the art works, yet a key issue, discussed by many, was how homogeneous the cuprates are. STM data, as well as other reports, showed that the cuprate superconductors (SC’s) studied were inhomogeneous, especially in the underdoped regime; while experiments, like ARPES and magnetoresistance have established the existence of a Fermi Surface (FS), at least above some doping level, in the cuprates.

This book encompasses the science, measurement, fabrica tion, and use of superconducting materials in large scale and small scale technologies. The present book is in some sense a continuation and completion of a series of two earlier books based on NA TO Advanced Study Institutes held over the last decade. The first book in the series entitled Superconducting Machines ~nd Devices: Large Systems Appli cations edited by S. Foner and B. B. Schwartz (1974) represented a compilation of all the applications of superconducting technology. The second book entitled Superconductor Applications: Squids and Machines, edited by B. B. Schwartz and S. Foner (1977) reviewed small scale applications and up-dated the large scale applications of superconductiv ity at that time. These two books are both introductions and advanced reference volumes for almost all aspects of the applications of super conductivity. The growth of applied superconductivity has mushroomed in the decade of the 1970's. Technologies which were discussed in the beginning of the 1970's are now beyond the prototype stage. Materials development and performance in operating systems is the basis of the continued applications and economic viability of super conducting technology. In this book, a complete review of all materials technology is presented by leading authorities who were instrumental in the development of superconducting materials technology. The present book is based on the NATO Advanced Study vi PREFACE Institute entitled Superconducting Materials: Science and Technology which was held from August 20 to August 30, 1980 in Sintra, Portugal.