Superconducting wires play an increasingly central role in power engineering, transportation systems, high-field magnets, and electric propulsion. Yet their performance is still limited by a familiar manufacturing challenge: small defects within the superconducting layer can disrupt current flow and reduce yield. A research collaboration led by Professor Sastry Pamidi at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering has been working with private industry partners to develop cable structures that can tolerate these defects, making superconducting systems more practical and cost-effective.
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
The team’s recent work examines a cable architecture built from multiple strands of superconducting tape wound around a central core. Known as a Conductor on Round Core, or CORC cable, the structure distributes current across many parallel tapes rather than relying on a single superconducting path. Small imperfections in one tape therefore do not halt or weaken the entire system. Instead, the current moves naturally to a neighboring tape through pressure contact, a process engineers refer to as current sharing. This behaviour helps preserve overall performance even when individual tapes contain minor defects.
Professor Sastry Pamidi at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering stated,
“Thanks to the unique structure of CORC and the way the cables in this work were fabricated, the project successfully demonstrated that the coils made with the VIC wires, wires that were considered defective, achieved equivalent performance as the coils that were made with almost perfect wires. This result can change the way the wire production yield is calculated, which will lead to a significant reduction in wire cost.”
CORC cables have been explored for more than a decade, but the latest study by Florida State University researchers, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, and industrial collaborators at Advanced Conductor Technologies and SuperPower Inc. adds new experimental support for their reliability. The group tested coils built from second-generation high-temperature superconducting tapes, including tapes that would normally be considered lower-grade or out-of-spec due to manufacturing flaws. Their results showed that coils wound from these lower-yield tapes could perform comparably to those made from near-perfect material. In practical terms, this means more usable wire per production run and a substantial reduction in manufacturing waste.
Pamidi’s group has a long record of supporting industrial development in this area. Their laboratory contributed early work on CORC technology when Advanced Conductor Technologies began commercialising the design. That effort included testing of conductor performance at various temperatures, mechanical stress limits, and magnetic field strengths. These studies helped establish CORC cables as a viable option for magnet systems cooled with helium gas, which remains stable over a wide temperature range and offers design advantages for high-field applications.
The most recent experiments further demonstrate that current sharing in a CORC cable mitigates the impact of tape defects without adding the complexity that comes from soldering individual tapes together. Traditional superconducting coils are typically assembled by joining many pieces of wire end-to-end, but this process is slow and expensive. By eliminating solder joints and relying on mechanical contact between tapes, CORC cables reduce fabrication time and maintain flexibility during coil winding.
Industry partners have emphasised how valuable this academic–industry relationship has been for solving engineering challenges that would be difficult to address independently. Advanced Conductor Technologies has worked with Florida State University researchers for more than fifteen years, relying on the university’s experimental facilities and modelling expertise to refine cable designs for applications such as fusion magnet systems, accelerator coils, and power-electronics hardware. SuperPower Inc., which supplied the high-temperature superconducting tape for the project, noted that the demonstration of current sharing may change how manufacturers evaluate wire yield and cost. If coils made from defect-containing tapes can match the performance of high-grade tapes, producers can expect a more efficient use of their material.
The relevance of this work spans far beyond the laboratory. Superconducting technologies are being explored for electric aviation, ship propulsion systems, grid-scale power transmission, magnetic levitation for transportation, medical imaging, and large-scale research instruments. Each of these fields requires long lengths of reliable wire, and each faces cost constraints associated with the complexity of producing superconducting tapes with extremely low defect rates. Cable designs that tolerate imperfections help bring down the barrier to wider adoption.
Pamidi’s group continues to develop and test high-temperature superconducting technologies that operate at temperatures around 77 kelvins, which reduces cooling demands compared with traditional low-temperature superconductors. Improvements in high-temperature wire performance, paired with cable architectures designed to mitigate defects, point toward more accessible superconducting solutions in engineering applications.
The study, highlights how collaborative research between universities and industry can support the practical advancement of superconducting hardware. By combining experimental testing, engineering analysis, and real-world manufacturing constraints, the work demonstrates a path toward more robust, cost-efficient superconducting cables capable of supporting emerging demands in power and magnet technologies.
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).
