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Scientists achieve major breakthrough in the quest for limitless energy: 'It's setting a world record' (www.yahoo.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Can we make flexible, ductile, high-temperature super conductors now? Or have we settled for packing a flexible tube full of powder, Pixy Stix style?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Actual, flexible, ~~ductile~~ ribbons. It's a new thing just in the last few years. The key turns out to be some kind of high-energy ion beam bombardment as the crystal is growing on the ordinary metal substrate.

The pixy stix wires produced pretty crummy quality superconductor, AFAIK, besides just being harder to work with.

Edit: Actually, the HTS itself is still a ceramic, so probably not ductile. Flexible and tough, though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wikipedia doesn't mention anything about that, got a link for further reading?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This is the article and subsection you're looking for. IIRC you can buy like 50 feet rolls of it right now, at least on commercial scales, and the runs on the spool are gradually getting longer. An HTSC project is one of my tinkering ideas down the line, if I ever get to it, haha.