Superconductive ceramics fabrication

But let s return to Josephson junctions for a moment. Even though a computer made of these incredible instruments has not yet been built, the junctions themselves, as we have said, are in use, fabricated of conventional superconducting materials. They are also beginning to appear in devices run by the new superconducting ceramics. 

A crucial concern in the application of superconducting ceramics is to devise ways to fabricate the new materials in desired shapes such as wires. This will be quite a challenge because these superconductors are ceramics and have the brittleness and fragility typical of ceramic materials. 

The Synthesis and Fabrication of Ceramics for Speciai Appiication 17.3.10. Preparation of Superconductive Ceramics... 

Electrical and Electronic Applications. Silver neodecanoate [62804-19-7] has been used in the preparation of a capacitor-end termination composition (110), lead and stannous neodecanoate have been used in circuit-board fabrication (111), and stannous neodecanoate has been used to form patterned semiconductive tin oxide films (112). The silver salt has also been used in the preparation of ceramic superconductors (113). Neodecanoate salts of barium, copper, yttrium, and europium have been used to prepare superconducting films and patterned thin-fHm superconductors. To prepare these materials, the metal salts are deposited on a substrate, then decomposed by heat to give the thin film (114—116) or by a focused beam (electron, ion, or laser) to give the patterned thin film (117,118). The resulting films exhibit superconductivity above Hquid nitrogen temperatures. 

Some scientists have foregone the ceramics altogether and attempted to fabricate wire out of metal alloys that can superconduct at temperatures warmer than normal for a metal. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, one team has made a superconductor from europium—a soft, silvery metal that was once in short supply but is now more easily acquired—barium, and copper. The alloy apparently works well at 90° K, which means it can run on liquid nitrogen moreover, it is more easily fabri-... 

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