Enhanced critical fields and superconducting properties of pre-doped B powder-type MgB₂strands

Abstract

Conventional doping methods that directly add C or a C-bearing species to Mg + B powder have the disadvantage of adding C inhomogeneously, yielding either under-reacted regions or, in some cases, secondary phases which may be either beneficial or detrimental. Alternatively, pre-doped B powder provides a more homogeneous distribution of the C dopant in MgB2. In this work, powders containing varying amounts of C were used to produce in situ MgB2 strands which showed high values of Bc2, Birr and transport Jc (104 A cm − 2 at 13.3 T). Compared to SiC-added and malic-acid-treated strands the pre-doped MgB2 showed high values of Birr primarily due to more efficient C substitution into the B sublattice and a concomitant increase in transport Jc.