Critical Currents and Magnet Applications of High-Tc Superconductors

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Abstract
The discovery of a 92 K superconductor in early 1987 by M. K. Wu, Paul Chu and their coworkers at the Universities of Alabama and Houston produced widespread euphoria. Newspapers and magazines of every conceivable political and social persuasion speculated on the applications of superconductivity. Some even foretold a new age; after the stone, bronze, iron, steel and semiconductor ages would come the superconductor age. Most of the applications envisaged for this new age depended on the generation of strong magnetic fields, frequently in large volumes. Thus the vanishing of resistance in the superconducting state was the key property for these applications, and it is this ability to carry very large current densities without ohmic loss that forms the essential thread of this article.