Magnetic Shielding Above 1 T at 20 K With Bulk, Large Grain YBCO Tubes Made by Buffer-Aided Top Seeded Melt Growth

YBCO tubes of ~10 mm diameter closed at one extremity were engineered by a buffer-aided top seeded melt growth fabrication process. These tubes can act as efficient “dc” magnetic shields and are observed to reduce axial flux densities of 1.5 T by a factor of 100 at 20 K. Such performances are comparable in magnitude to the record threshold inductions reported for bulk MgB2 and Bi-2212 materials at lower temperatures. Magnetic shielding measurements for open and closed tubes at 77 K also show that the presence of the cap improves substantially the shielding performance at the closed extremity since it reduces the penetration through the open end. This fabrication technique is extremely promising for shielding “dc” stray fields generated by high temperature superconductor magnets operated in a temperature range obtained by cryocoolers, liquid hydrogen (20 K), or liquid neon (27 K).