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A superconductor suitable for use in an electromagnet that could be cooled with liquid nitrogen alone would be practically "room temperature" as far as these th
by wl 8y ago
A superconductor suitable for use in an electromagnet that could be cooled with liquid nitrogen alone would be practically "room temperature" as far as these things go. Liquid nitrogen is cheap and abundant, as opposed to liquid helium which is required to get down to 4 K.
As stands at the moment, some older MRIs use liquid nitrogen to help insulate liquid helium. Newer machines use liquid helium alone.
- mrfusion 8y agoDoesn’t rebco tape use liquid nitrogen?
- wl 8y agoIt's been awhile since I've paid attention to the field, so apologies if I get this wrong. I was under the impression that cuprate superconductors were unsuitable for use in MRI magnets because they only superconduct across clusters of microdomains, making it impossible (at least with current technology) to generate the large, strong, and uniform field necessary for the application. There seems to be ongoing research into producing suitable magnets with cuprates, but I don't know if the problem has been solved yet. In any case, there are no commercially available MRI machines that use cuprate superconductors.