David C. Larbalestier Grainger Professor of Superconducting Materials and L.V. Shubnikov Professor Emeritus Address/E-mail Program Affiliations Courses Education Fields of Interest Publications Awards & Honors Summary

Contact Information

Primary Address: 253 Shaw Building 2031 E. Paul Dirac Dr. Tallahassee, FL 32310-3706 Tel: (850) 645-7483 Fax: (850) 645-7754 E-mail: larbales@engr.wisc.edu

Secondary Address: larbalestier@asc.magnet.fsu.edu

Program Affiliations

• Materials Science and Engineering
• Physics

• Materials Science Program

Courses

• MS&E 360: Materials Laboratory I
• MS&E 890: Pre-Dissertator's Research
• MS&E 990: Research and Thesis

Education

• BS (physical metallurgy) 1965, Imperial College, University of London
• PhD (physical metallurgy) 1970, Imperial College, University of London

Fields of Interest

• The structure-property relationships of superconducting materials and their applications to superconducting magnets
• We study both the conventional low temperature superconductors such as Nb-Ti and Nb₃Sn, the new medium temperature superconductor MgB₂ and the cuprate high temperature superconductors such as (Bi,Pb)₂Sr₂Ca₂Cu₃O_x and YBa₂Cu₃O_x

Publications

Patents

• Wrapped Tantalum Diffusion Barriers, M. Young, D.C. Larbalestier, U.S. Patent 4,205,119, May 1980.
• Wrapped Tantalum Diffusion Barriers, M. Young, D.C. Larbalestier, U.S. Patent 4,285,740, August 1981.
• Niobium-Titanium Superconductors Produced by Powder Metallurgy Having Artificial Flux Pinning Centers, P. Jablonski, D.C. Larbalestier, U.S. Patent 5,226,947, July 1993.
• Simultaneous constraint and phase conversion processing of oxide superconductors Li; Qi, Thompson; Elliott D. Riley, Jr.G N. Hellstrom; Eric E. Larbalestier; David C. De Moranville; Kenneth L. Parrell; Jeffrey A., Reeves Jodi L. US Patent 6,555,503, April 29, 2003.

Papers

• A. A. Polyanskii, D. M. Feldmann, and D. C. Larbalestier, "Chapter D3.4: Magneto-Optical Characterization Techniques," in D. A. Cardwell and D. S. Ginley, eds., "Handbook of Superconducting Materials," vol. 2, pp. 1551-1567, Bristol, UK: Institute of Physics Publishing UK, 2003.
• L. Cooley, P. Lee, and D. Larbalestier, "Chapter B3.3.2: Processing of Low-Tc Conductors: the Alloy Nb-Ti," in D. A. Cardwell and D. S. Ginley, eds., "Handbook of Superconducting Materials," vol. 1, pp. 603-639, Bristol, UK: Institute of Physics UK, 2003.
• D. C. Larbalestier, L. D. Cooley, M. O. Rikel, A. A. Polyanskii, J. Jiang, S. Patnaik, X. Y. Cai, D. M. Feldmann, A. Gurevich, A. A. Squitieri, M. T. Naus, C. B. Eom, E. E. Hellstrom, R. J. Cava, and K. A. Regan, "Strongly Linked Current Flow in Polycrystalline Forms of the Superconductor MgB₂," Nature, 410: 186-189, 2001.
• C.B. Eom, M.K. Lee, J.H. Choi, L. Belenky, X. Song, L.D. Cooley, M.T. Naus, S. Patnaik, J. Jiang, M. Rikel, A. Polyanskii, A. Gurevich, X.Y. Cai, S.D. Bu, S.E. Babcock, E.E. Hellstrom, and D.C. Larbalestier, “High Critical Current Density and Enhanced Irreversibility Field in Superconducting MgB₂ Thin Films”, Nature 411: 558-560, 2001.
• D. Larbalestier, A. Gurevich, D. M. Feldmann and A. Polyanskii, “High Tc Superconducting Materials For Electric Power Applications”, Nature 414, 368-377, 2001.
• A. Gurevich, M. S. Rzchowski, G. Daniels, S. Patnaik, B. M. Hinaus, F. Carillo, F. Tafuri, and D. C. Larbalestier, “Flux Flow of Abrikosov-Josephson Vortices Along Grain Boundaries in High-Temperature Superconductors,” Physical Review Letters 88, 097001-1-4 (2002).
• V. Braccini, L. D. Cooley, S. Patnaik, P. Manfrinetti, A. Palenzona, A. S. Siri, and D. C. Larbalestier, "Significant Enhancement of Irreversibility Field in Clean-Limit Bulk MgB₂," Applied Physics Letters, 81: 4577-4579, 2002.
• A Gurevich, S Patnaik, V Braccini, K H Kim, C Mielke, X Song, L D Cooley, S D Bu, D M Kim, J H Choi, L J Belenky, J Giencke, M K Lee, W Tian, X Q Pan, A Siri, E E Hellstrom, C B Eom and D C Larbalestier, “Very high upper critical fields in MgB₂ produced by selective tuning of impurity scattering”, Supercond. Sci. Technol. 17 278-286 (2004).
• R.M. Scanlan, A.P. Malozemoff and D. C. Larbalestier, “Superconducting Materials for large-scale applications,” Proc. of the IEEE 92, 1639-1654 (2004).
• D. Abraimov, D. M. Feldmann, A. A. Polyanskii, A. Gurevich, G. Daniels, D. C. Larbalestier, A. P. Zhuravel, and A. V. Ustinov, “Scanning laser imaging of dissipation in YBa₂Cu₃O_x coated conductors”, Appl. Phys. Letts, 85, 2568-2570 (2004).
• X Song, V. Braccini, D C Larbalestier, “Inter- and Intra-granular Nanostructure and Possible Spinodal Decomposition in Low Resistivity Bulk MgB₂ with Varying Critical Fields”, J. of Materials Research 19, 2245-2255 (2004).
• L. D. Cooley, C. M. Fischer, P. J. Lee, and D. C. Larbalestier, “Simulations of the effects of tin composition gradients on the superconducting properties of Nb₃Sn conductors”, J. Appl. Phys. 96, 2122-2130 (2004).
• 261. V. Braccini, A. Gurevich, J.E. Giencke, M.C. Jewell, C.B. Eom, D.C. Larbalestier, A. Pogrebnyakov, Y. Cui, B. T. Liu, Y. F.Hu, J. M. Redwing, Qi Li, X.X. Xi, R.K. Singh, R. Gandikota, J. Kim, B. Wilkens, N. Newman, J. Rowell, B. Moeckly, V. Ferrando, C. Tarantini, D. Marré, M. Putti, C. Ferdeghini, R. Vaglio, E. Haanappel, “High-field superconductivity in alloyed MgB₂ thin films”, Phys. Rev. B 71, 012504 (2005)

Selected Awards, Honors and Societies

• Matthey Prize for best Ph.D. thesis in Metallurgy, Imperial College, University of London, 1970.
• Industrial Research IR-100 Award, 1979, for the development of the first Nb3Sn NMR (470 MHz) superconducting magnet and spectrometer. (Joint with C.A. Scott, J.E. Magraw, R. Wheatley and P. Hanley.)
• LV Shubnikov Chair - Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Professorship – UW Graduate School Chair (1990)
• Fellow of the American Physical Society (1990)
• Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society) Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award for the Development of High Current Density Nb-Ti conductors for Accelerator Magnets (jointly with R. M. Scanlan, 1991)
• Grainger Professor of Superconductivity – Chair of the College of Engineering (1996)
• Council for Chemical Research, Research Collaboration Award 2000 (Award given to the Wire Development Group, of which I was a founding member, for its pioneering work on the materials science of (Bi,Pb)₂Sr₂Ca₂Cu₃O_x.
• The IEEE award for continuing and significant contributions in the field of applied superconductivity (2000)
• Fellow Institute of Physics, United Kingdom (2001)
• Review Panel Member for the Swiss Center on Materials with Novel Electronic Properties (MaNEP), University of Geneva, 2002-present.
• Advisory Board Superconducting Materials Center, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba Japan (2002- present)
• National Academy of Engineering - 2003
• Committee on High Magnetic Fields (COHMAG), National Research Council Board on Physics and Astronomy, 2003-2005.

Summary

The fundamental interest of our group is in understanding the transport of supercurrent in superconductors and their critical fields. The magnitude of the supercurrent density J_c is the most important factor controlling applications. We must understand the physics of the interactions of magnetic flux vortices with the nanoscale defects found in real superconductors, since the flux pinning force exerted by the nanostructure on the vortices controls the supercurrent density. Thus we must fabricate the materials, analyze the microstructure at all relevant length scales and correlate the fabrication process and the microstructure to the superconducting properties. We are intensely interactive, both within the Applied Superconductivity Center and with the broader research and applications community. Our work is supported by multi-investigator grants from several branches of DOE, NSF, AFOSR and other agencies. We collaborate with several leading industrial and national laboratory groups.

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