Superconducting magnets

A superconducting magnet is an electromagnet made from coils of superconducting wire. They must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures during operation. In its superconducting state the wire can conduct much larger electric currents than ordinary wire, creating intense magnetic fields. Superconducting magnets can produce greater magnetic fields than all but the strongest electromagnets and can be cheaper to operate because no energy is dissipated as heat in the windings. They are used in MRI machines in hospitals, and in scientific equipment such as NMR spectrometers, mass spectrometers, fusion reactors and particle accelerators.

During operation, the magnet windings must be cooled below their critical temperature, the temperature at which the winding material changes from the normal resistive state and becomes a superconductor. Two types of cooling regimes are commonly used to maintain magnet windings at temperatures sufficient to maintain superconductivity:

Liquid helium is used as a coolant for most superconductive windings, even those with critical temperatures far above its boiling point of 4.2 K. This is because the lower the temperature, the better superconductive windings work—the higher the currents and magnetic fields they can stand without returning to their nonsuperconductive state. The magnet and coolant are contained in a thermally insulated container (dewar) called a cryostat. To keep the helium from boiling away, the cryostat is usually constructed with an outer jacket containing (significantly cheaper) liquid nitrogen at 77 K. Alternatively, a thermal shield made of conductive material and maintained in 40 K-60 K temperature range, cooled by conductive connections to the cryocooler cold head, is placed around the helium-filled vessel to keep the heat input to the latter at acceptable level. One of the goals of the search for high temperature superconductors is to build magnets that can be cooled by liquid nitrogen alone. At temperatures above about 20 K cooling can be achieved without boiling off cryogenic liquids.

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