The ERC Proof of Concept IMPACT (874964) led to the development of a new manufacturing technology for high temperature superconducting (HTS) coated conductors (CC). The activities of the ERC Proof of Concept (validation, analysis of the market, creating an IP strategy, description of the business potential and possible routes to market) served to raise awareness of the technology with the aim of generating commercial partnerships that will lead to the transfer of the technology to a company.
Superconductivity presents a huge interest worldwide for its opportunities in cleantech energy. However, major challenges currently limit the practical use of HTS conductors: (i) the high cost / performance ratio imposed by the fabrication methods of kilometer-lengths epitaxial YBCO films, limits CC manufacturing throughput through low growth rates; (ii) the low throughput in the production of CCs leads to a severe limitation in generating drastic cost reductions for CCs, required for wide market implementation. Due to overall cost, it is uneconomical to unlock the potential of large-scale applications such as wind turbines, generators, rotating machines for electrical aircrafts, Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage or advanced HTS MRI / NMR machines, where the HTS material cost can reach 1/3 of the full device. Cost/performance is the main barrier, the bottleneck of superconductor CC industry, which currently costs 200 €/kAm (1 €/kA-m meaning 1 € for a 1m tape able to carry 1 kA).
As a solution, we combine low cost (CSD), high throughput (TLA ultrafast growth) and high performance (nanocomposites), by integrating additive manufacturing processes and digital printing, to deliver a commercially relevant and industry scalable manufacturing process for HTS CCs.
Within the ERC Proof of Concept, our aim was to develop a solid strategy for decreasing time to market of our CSD-TLAG technology by working on two key points:
▪ Technology: to validate it with commercial reel-to-reel substrates (available from existing collaborators)
▪ Commercial: to create a blueprint for the transition from a CSD process reel-to-reel pilot plant implementation to a TLAG-CSD one (collaborating with existing partners).
Homogeneous epitaxial TLAG-CSD growth of YBCO layers on 5 cm tape have been obtained with good performances (Jc(77K) = 1MA/cm2) and fast growth rates (beyond 1000 nm/s) with simplified processing set up scalable to reel-to-reel coated conductor production.
2G HTS superconductivity sector is the target market for TLAG process. A competitive and gap analysis indicates that TLAG could gain market share leveraging its synergies with existing production methods. Strategies for future development were identified for protecting the technology.
