Melt processing and the performance as a superconducting permanent magnet of RE-Ba-Cu-O/Ag (RE = Sm, Nd)

The amount of magnetic flux that a melt-processed bulk superconductor can trap has drastically increased recently by the successful synthesis of single domain RE-Ba-Cu-O (RE = Sm, Nd) samples with the addition of Ag. As a result of this progress in processing, it became increasingly important to develop an efficient and practical magnetization technique to extract the potential of the material in applications that use melt-grown superconductors as quasi-permanent magnets. We review our recent works on the melt-growth technique as well as the pulse field magnetization studies. Using these techniques, we have constructed a magnetic field generator, the performance of which is evaluated in this study. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.