Comparative study on the critical current performance of Bi-2223/Ag and YBCO wires in low magnetic fields at liquid nitrogen temperature

A comparative study on the critical current performance of Bi-2223/Ag and YBCO coated conductor wires in low magnetic fields at liquid nitrogen temperature was carried out in this work. Five commercial high temperature superconductor wires from different manufacturers were collected. Their critical currents were measured in magnetic fields, ranging from 0 to 0.4 T. On contrary to the common conception, the Bi-2223/Ag samples had better performance than YBCO coated conductor samples in the magnetic fields parallel to the wide surface of superconducting wires within the experimental scope. We also found similar results by collecting the concerned datum from the published literatures to confirm our measurement results. At the present stage, this fact made that the Bi-2223/Ag wires might be the preferred choice for the applications with mainly low parallel fields involved, unless other considerations were prioritized. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.