Thermal conductivity measurement of BSCCO tapes for current lead applications

Abstract

Current leads, e.g. for magnet coils, are an important application for high temperature superconductors (HTS), which is realized quite often today. The HTS material offers an economic possibility to conduct high currents without transferring much heat from the warm end to the cold device. Therefore BSCCO tapes stabilized with Ag offer a good choice. To decrease the high thermal conductivity of the stabilizer material doping or alloying with Au or Mg is commonly used. The thermal conductivity of several BSCCO single tapes as well as stacks from different suppliers has been measured and compared. Furthermore the influence of the solder material used in stacks is investigated. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.