Dendritic flux avalanches in a superconducting MgB2 tape

Tapes of MgB2 with high critical current have a significant technological potential, but can experience operational breakdown due to thermomagnetic instabilities. Such events are routinely registered by magnetisation measurements, but were never observed by direct imaging techniques. Here we report...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Qureishy, T., Laliena, Carlos, Martínez Fernández, Elena, Qviller, A. J., Vestgården, J. I., Johansen, T. H., Navarro, Rafael, Mikheenko, P.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/160375
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/160375
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Superconductivity
MgB2
Tapes
Magneto-optical imaging
Dendritic avalanches
Descripción
Sumario:Tapes of MgB2 with high critical current have a significant technological potential, but can experience operational breakdown due to thermomagnetic instabilities. Such events are routinely registered by magnetisation measurements, but were never observed by direct imaging techniques. Here we report magneto-optical imaging visualisation of a tape with reduced thickness and enhanced critical current density. The spatial structure of the thermomagnetic avalanche events was resolved, and the reproducibility and nucleation thresholds were determined. Avalanches appearing at low fields are small intrusions at the tape edges, while larger fields create more extensive avalanches having dendritic structures similar to those observed in thin-film superconductors. In contrast to dendritic avalanches in thin films, the avalanches in the tapes show reproducibility to a larger extent.