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Concept
Technological applications of superconductivity
Summary
Technological applications of superconductivity include:
the production of sensitive magnetometers based on SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices)
fast digital circuits (including those based on Josephson junctions and rapid single flux quantum technology),
powerful superconducting electromagnets used in maglev trains, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) machines, magnetic confinement fusion reactors (e.g. tokamaks), and the beam-steering and focusing magnets used in particle accelerators
low-loss power cables
RF and microwave filters (e.g., for mobile phone base stations, as well as military ultra-sensitive/selective receivers)
fast fault current limiters
high sensitivity particle detectors, including the transition edge sensor, the superconducting bolometer, the superconducting tunnel junction detector, the kinetic inductance detector, and the superconducting nanowire single-photon detector
railgun and coilgun magnets
electric motors and generators
The biggest application for superconductivity is in producing the large-volume, stable, and high-intensity magnetic fields required for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). This represents a multi-billion-US$ market for companies such as Oxford Instruments and Siemens. The magnets typically use low-temperature superconductors (LTS) because high-temperature superconductors are not yet cheap enough to cost-effectively deliver the high, stable, and large-volume fields required, notwithstanding the need to cool LTS instruments to liquid helium temperatures. Superconductors are also used in high field scientific magnets.
Particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider can include many high field electromagnets requiring large quantities of LTS. To construct the LHC magnets required more than 28 percent of the world's niobium-titanium wire production for five years, with large quantities of NbTi also used in the magnets for the LHC's huge experiment detectors.
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