Suitability of Bi-HTS wires for high field magnets

Abstract There is a very strong demand for superconducting magnets with very high fields (23.5 T and above) as basis for experimental high field facilities and new generations of NMR spectrometers. Such field strengths can only be generated by magnets with insert coils made of HTS conductors. With this background, the superconducting properties of commercially available Bi-HTS wires were investigated in a bath cooled superconducting magnet system at 4.2 K and magnetic fields up to 10 T. The voltage–current relation was examined resistively using a high resolution four-point measurement technique. The dependence of the critical current I c and of the n -value on the field alteration (increasing/decreasing) and the orientation of the wire to the external field (parallel as well as perpendicular) is presented and compared.