A novel joint-less second-generation high-temperature superconducting toroidal coil: Promise for fabricating compact toroidal magnetic fields

Abstract

This paper presents a novel joint-less toroidal magnet made of second-generation high-temperature superconducting (2G-HTS) tapes. This approach effectively resolves the closed-loop issue for 2G-HTS magnets and has the potential to provide higher and more stable magnetic fields. Compared with traditional 2G-HTS toroidal magnets, while the current loops of the joint-less magnets have no resistance, a decrease in magnetic field still occurs, especially in coils with insulation. Therefore, this work focuses on the decrease of the magnetic field of this novel magnet using experimental and microanalytical methods. For the first time, it was verified that, by winding two coil groups, insulated and no-insulated, parallel charging does not cause interference between them. Furthermore, the magnetic field area was expanded by finite element analysis, and simulations showed that the magnetic field converged with increasing number of coils. Besides, we found that the decrease of the magnetic field was related to the damage of the tape during slitting and winding, where insulated coils were more susceptible to damage during winding. The damage usually occurred at the starting point of the tape slitting, because the copper layer was separated due to adhesion during the winding of insulated coils, which further caused the superconducting layer to detach, resulting in a decrease in the critical current. From our perspective, benefiting from the high critical field of the 2G-HTS tapes, this novel toroidal coil structure has significant implications for the construction of compact toroidal magnets.