October 7, 2009
Los Alamos National Lab has been working to develop high-volume production processes for making a thin, flexible tape that operates as a superconductor at liquid hydrogen nitrogen temperatures and can carry 3 million amps per cm2. This video crams a lot of information into one brief video, with quick shots of each stage of the production process, including the preparation of the base nickel alloy tape, the ion beam-assisted deposition of magnesium oxide and the pulsed-laser deposition of yttrium barium copper oxide/samarium barium copper oxide. Besides demonstrating some of the progress being made at LANL, this is a good introduction to a lot of processes that are brought to bear in this type of manufacturing.