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Measurements of the microstructural, microchemical and transition temperature gradients of A15 layers in a high-performance Nb3Sn powder-in-tube superconducting strand

In the past 5 years there has been a remarkable increase in layer critical current density, Jc, for Nb3Sn. At ∼5000 A mm−2 (12 T, 4.2 K), the average layer critical current density is now double that of the best ITER central solenoid model coil strand. The improvements in critical current density are a result of increased Sn content in the superconducting A15 phase and better compositional homogeneity, and perhaps other reasons not yet understood. The first indication that such large increases in critical current density of the Nb3Sn layer were possible was in the powder-in-tube strands produced by Shape Metal Innovation. The design of these strands allows us to accurately measure the composition gradient as well as the gradient in critical temperature across the A15 layer, and we report these measurements here for a wide range of heat treatments. Inductive Tc measurements were used to measure the radial gradient of Tc, while specific heat measurements revealed the position-insensitive inhomogeneity of the A15 layer. Composition gradients were measured by energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy in a field emission scanning electron microscope. The three characterizations show that the composition and Tc gradient is quite shallow near the central Sn source and only becomes steep adjacent to the Nb sheath of each filament, a result that is beneficial to maximizing the fraction of the layer with high Tc. This strong nonlinearity of the Tc and composition gradient means that excellent properties are obtained, in spite of the built in composition gradients inevitable in any filamentary design of composite. The gradients are much smaller than reported for bronze-route conductors but higher than the overall layer gradient found in the latest generation of high critical current density internal Sn design strands. Coupled to recent modelling simulations, our data show the great value of high-Sn designs in developing high layer Jc values in Nb3Sn conductors.