Researchers led by Sastry Pamidi at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, together with teams at Florida State University’s Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS) and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, have reported progress on a cable design that allows superconducting wires to maintain performance even when individual tapes contain manufacturing defects. Working closely with industry partners, the group has contributed to a configuration that enables electrical current to move between tapes when one encounters a flaw, a development that could support more reliable and cost-efficient superconducting technologies.
Weiss, J. D., van der Laan, D., Kim, C. H., Teyber, R., Radcliff, K., Phifer, V., Davis, D. S., Zhang, Y., Cooley, L. D., & Pamidi, S. v. (2025). Demonstration of current sharing around tape defects in a low-inductance CORC ® wire solenoid generating a peak magnetic field of 4.6 T at 25 K. Superconductor Science and Technology, 38(8), 085007. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6668/adedbd
Superconducting wires are valued for their ability to carry current with no electrical resistance, which makes them useful for electric motors, power systems, high-field magnets, fusion devices and medical technologies. Producing them at scale, however, is challenging. Imperfections introduced during manufacturing can disrupt current flow, and traditional approaches often rely on soldering together multiple pieces of superconducting tape to create longer segments with fewer defects. The recently tested design takes a different approach by distributing the current path across several tapes rather than relying on each one to be free of flaws.
Sastry Pamidi at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering stated,
“Our collaboration with FSU, which has been ongoing for about a decade and a half, has allowed us to solve many technical challenges that would have prevented our cables from becoming a successful commercial solution for applications such as fusion, particle accelerators and power applications.”
The wires used in the study, known as Conductor on Round Core (CORC) cables, consist of multiple superconducting tapes wound in a spiral around a cylindrical core. Instead of being soldered, the tapes are pressed against one another so that current can move laterally between them. Because manufacturing defects are typically scattered rather than concentrated in one location, the chances of all the tapes failing at the same point are low. When the current encounters a defect in one tape, it naturally shifts to a neighbouring tape, allowing the wire to continue functioning. This process, referred to as current sharing, results in a cable that remains operational even when made from material that would otherwise be considered low-yield.
According to Sastry Pamidi, interim director of CAPS and professor at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, the partnership with Advanced Conductor Technologies has allowed the group to support both research and practical implementation. CORC technology, developed in earlier joint work, has already enabled coils that can operate using helium gas rather than liquid nitrogen. Because helium stays in a gaseous state over a wider range of temperatures, this gives engineers more flexibility when integrating the cables into different systems. Pamidi notes that the current-sharing results directly support efforts to lower wire production costs while improving reliability.
The project also involved SuperPower Inc., a manufacturer of second-generation high-temperature superconducting tape. Their participation allowed the researchers to test the cable design using tape that had been downgraded because of defects. Coils built with this tape performed comparably to coils made from near-perfect material. SuperPower’s vice president of research and development, Yifei Zhang, said that this could change how production yields are calculated and may reduce the cost of superconducting wire significantly.
Industry partners say the collaboration has been essential. Danko van der Laan, president and CEO of Advanced Conductor Technologies, explained that access to Florida State University’s research expertise and laboratory capabilities has helped his company address technical challenges that would have slowed the progress of commercial CORC cable development. Their partnership has been active for more than a decade and continues to focus on improving cable performance for applications including particle accelerators, fusion devices and high-power electrical systems.
Superconducting technology is becoming increasingly relevant across engineering sectors. Applications span electric aircraft and ships, power transmission, magnetic levitation, large-scale scientific facilities and high-performance computing infrastructure. As these systems evolve, reducing wire cost while maintaining performance is a critical step toward broader adoption. The new cable architecture provides a pathway for manufacturers to use more of the material they produce while retaining the electrical performance required for demanding environments.
The research team continues to work on advanced forms of high-temperature superconducting wire that can operate at temperatures up to 77 kelvins, which would support simpler and more affordable system designs. The present results show that improved cable topology can offset the limitations of individual tapes, giving engineers more options when designing superconducting coils and magnet systems.
Adrian graduated with a Masters Degree (1st Class Honours) in Chemical Engineering from Chester University along with Harris. His master’s research aimed to develop a standardadised clean water oxygenation transfer procedure to test bubble diffusers that are currently used in the wastewater industry commercial market. He has also undergone placments in both US and China primarely focused within the R&D department and is an associate member of the Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE).
