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

Bykova, Julia S; Lima, Márcio Dias; Haines, Carter S; Tolly, Derrick; Salamon, M B; Baughman, Ray H; Zakhidov, Anvar A · Adv Mater · 2014

basic_science · Level V

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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.