Inexpensive High Tc Superconducting Wires

After the discovery of high Tc superconducting oxides, the way to 77 K cryogeny based applications was open and worldwide efforts have been undertaken to manufacture conductors, wires or tapes, with or without matrices or substrates. More often than not, these researches were carried out without taking into account neither the specific superconducting (SC) properties of these oxides nor those related to their potential utilization temperature. In fact, this leads to new conceptions of conductors1: for instance, the filamentary aspect could be restricted to a.c applications or when remanent magnetic field has to be avoided. However, interest in making oxide filament based wires remains.