Speaker
Description
With the widespread application of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) REBCO tapes in fields such as energy, healthcare, and transportation, their operating environments have become increasingly complex, placing higher demands on their operational stability. Although the multi-filamentary REBCO tapes can improve the electromagnetic performance, specific metals and compounds in REBCO tapes somehow react with water after exposing without stabilization layers, leading to HTS material degradation and performance failure. This study proposes a plasma-driven film deposition method based on atmospheric pressure low-temperature plasma jet (APPJ) with hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) precursor to enhance the hydrophobicity of REBCO tapes. Results show that after the plasma film deposition, the water contact angle (WCA) on the tape surface increases from the original 94°±7° to 137.5°±1.5°. Moreover, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) indicates that there is a typical spherical cluster-like film covering the tape surface, which mainly consists of silicon (Si) and oxygen (O) elements rather than copper (Cu), yttrium (Y), or barium (Ba) elements. Furthermore, the immersion test in liquid nitrogen was also carried out, and it shows that the film maintains considerable stability in hydrophobicity performance and chemical composition after 30 minutes of liquid nitrogen bathing, demonstrating the feasibility of the plasma film fabrication for hydrophobicity improvement of superconducting tapes. This study provides an effective method for enhancing the weather resistance and long-term stability performance of REBCO tapes, offering potential technical support for high-performance design of multi-filamentary REBCO tapes.
Keywords: multi-filamentary REBCO tapes, multi filaments, plasma treatment, surface modification, hydrophobicity
Acknowledgements:
This research was funded by Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52207160, 52207026, 52037004), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20220341).
