High Quality Splices of Superconductors

Abstract

Important developments have been made in the technology over the last 50 years for the large-scale applications of superconductivity in terms of field strength, scale, field volume, and stored energy. The use of superconductors allows production of high field magnets. The magnets for NMR and MRI generally require superconducting splices. (Splice: a join consisting of two ropes, cables, etc).
Reasons to prepare splices in NMR and MRI magnets:
- connection to power supply
- joining the preprepared superconducting units
Thus, the splicing technology is very important in developing applied products and expanding the practical applications. To prepare splices is crucial from point of quality of the superconducting circuits: to ascertain superconducting quality of the splices is not an easy task.
By applying the explosive welding technique high quality superconducting splices with sub nΩ electrical resistance can be prepared. The limit of practical application of this technique is the quantity of the high explosive. As the quantity is defined by the critical thickness of the high explosives, crucial point of the technology is the reduction of the applicable commercial high explosives.