CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION

5.1 GENERAL CLASSIFICATION OF SUPER CONDUCTORS.

There is not just one criterion to classify super conductors. The most common are:
(a) By their physical properties
They can be type 1 (if their phase transition is of first order) or type II (if their phase
transition is of second order)
(b) By the theory to explain them
They can be conventional (if they are fully explained with the BCS theory or related
theories) or unconventional (if no).
(c) By their critical temperature (TC):
They can be high temperature (HTS) i.e generally considered if they reach the
superconducting state just by cooling them with liquid nitrogen (if Tc > 77K) or low
temperature (LTS) i.e if they need other technique to be cooled under their critical
temperature (if Tc < 77K) or >.
(d) By materials: If they can be chemical element (such as mecury or lead), alloys (as
niobium- titanium or germanium-niobium) ceramics (as YBCO or the magnesium
diboride), or organic superconductors (as fullerenes or carbon nonotubes, which technically
might be included between the chemical element as they are made of carbon).
5.2 APPLICATIONS
Full understandings of super conductivity is not yet know, but scientists believe that a full
knowledge of superconductivity and its surrounding phenomena have very essential potentials
and thus can improve the standard of living for human the all over the world. Already, researches
are going on in labs on best to employ the use of superconductors especially the high temperature
superconductors HTS (which can be cooled with liquid nitrogen, a substance far cheaper than
human and more obtainable). Although a few ground have been broken, a full knowledge of
super conductivity can means an endless stream of possibilities and practical application. Below
are a few of the technological application of superconductivity.
Superconductivity have been used to make “digital circuits” (e.g based on rapid single
flux quantum technology) at RF microwave filters for mobile phone base stations.
 Superconductors are used to build “Josephson Junction” which are the building block of
SQUDS (Super Conducting Quantum Interference Devices), the most sensitive magnetometer
know series of Josephson devices are used to defined the S1 volt, depending on the particular
mode of operation, a Josephson Junction can be used as photo detector or as a mixer. The large
resistance change at the transition from the normal to the superconductivity state is used to build
thermometers in cryogenic micro calorimeter photon detectors.
Superconducting magnet are some of the most powerful electromagnetic know. They are
used in MRI and NMR machines, mass spectrometers, and beam-steering magnets used in
particle accelerators. They can also be used for magnetic separation, where weakly magnetic
particles are extracted from a background or less or nonmagnetic particles, as in the pigment
industries.
Since 2000, several transmission project have used cryogenically cooled HTS (High
Temperature Superconductors) cable to provide electricity off of commercial power grid. In
2001, 150,000 resident of Copenhagen Denmark, began receiving electricity through HTS
cables. That same year, three-four hundred foot HTS cable were installed for Detroit Edison at
Frisbie substation that could deliver 100 million watt of power. HTS cable connected to the
Nigerian Muhawk power corporation’s power grid since July 2006 has been supplying power to
approximately 70, 000 households. These successful project are proofs that HTS use in power
transmission is a practical reality.
Other early market are arising where the relative efficiency, size and weight advantage of
devices based on HTS outweigh the additional cost involved. Promising future application
include “high performance transformer”, “electric motors” (e.g for vehicles propulsion, as in
vactrains or Maglev trains), magnetic levitation devices and fault current limiters. However,
superconductivity is sensitive to moving magnetic field so application that uses alternating
current (e.g transformers) will be more difficult to develop than those that rely on direct current.