Mechanism of enhancement in electromagnetic properties of MgB2 by Nano SiC doping

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Mar 2;98(9):097002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.097002. Epub 2007 Feb 28.

Abstract

A comparative study of pure, SiC, and C doped MgB2 wires has revealed that the SiC doping allowed C substitution and MgB2 formation to take place simultaneously at low temperatures. C substitution enhances H_{c2}, while the defects, small grain size, and nanoinclusions induced by C incorporation and low-temperature processing are responsible for the improvement in J_{c}. The irreversibility field (H_{irr}) for the SiC doped sample reached the benchmarking value of 10 T at 20 K, exceeding that of NbTi at 4.2 K. This dual reaction model also enables us to predict desirable dopants for enhancing the performance properties of MgB2.