LNCMI Grenoble.

Published on Mar 2, 2018.

I am in charge of the development of the high temperature superconductor (HTS) technology at LNCMI. The HTS are very nice materials known to carry current without Joule dissipation or to levitate small permanent magnet at the temperature of a liquid nitrogen bath (77K) and higher. What is of interest for a high magnet field facility is that they can also carry current at the liquid helium temperature well beyond the field limit of low temperature superconductor such as Nb3Sn. Thus HTS insert could be used to increase the actual performance of superconducting magnet beyond 25T.

My activity takes two aspects:

  • First I am acting as a local contact providing support for any proposal related to characterization under high magnetic field of HTS in view of their application.
  • Then I led a in-house research for developing an HTS magnet technology through several collaborations.

LNCMI provides a unique set of room temperature bore configuration allowing to test small samples up to 30 T, but also large coils up to 20 T or even larger dipoles up to 10 T. That is a strength and provides a lot of opportunities. I am currently coordinator of the NOUGAT project which has nothing but the name of the candy from Montelimar but which aims at fabricating and testing a 10 T HTS insert into a 20 T background field.

I like to cross local contact and project activities as well as research and engineering. It is a permanent enrichment. I like the human environment, internationally open, the mixing of scientific concerns from our users as well as technical issues requiring support from different backgrounds. HTS development is not a solo race. I already benefited from strong support within existing collaboration with other french labs and organism, with Japanese colleagues. I participate to strengthen collaboration with international partners sharing our interest in HTS technology within EMFL projects.