Assembly and Integration of Superconductive Measurement Circuits for a Spaceflight Experiment

electrical, magnetic, and thermal properties (refs. 1-3). Ineach instance, the replacement of existing materials withhigh-temperature superconductors would either significantlyincrease the performance capability of the spacecraftinstrument or substantially reduce the payload size andweight, thereby reducing launch costs. Furthermore,several spacecraft already employ cryogenic refrigerationsystems, providing an operational environment well-suitedfor the use of superconductive devices.Thick films of high-temperature superconductivematerials have been fabricated using conventionalmanufacturing processes such as screen printing. Thesefilms have been deposited onto polycrystalline ceramicsubstrates such as AI203 and ZrO2 and have been found toexhibit critical current density, Jc, values up to 100 A/cm 2(refs. 4-8). Although the Jc properties of these films arelower than those of preferentially-oriented thin films of thesame materials, the thick films do exhibit sufficientperformance characteristics for many aerospace applications(refs. 1 and 3).Thin film superconductors have been produced usingseveral vacuum deposition processes including sputtering(ref. 9), laser ablation (ref. 10), and vapor deposition (ref.11). These materials are typically deposited onto singlecrystal substrates such as (100) SrTiO 3 and (100) LaA103,which have lattice constants similar to that of