High-temperature Superconductivity (HTS)
The commercial applications so far for high temperature superconductors (HTS) have been limited.
HTS can superconduct at temperatures above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, which makes them cheaper to cool than low temperature superconductors (LTS). However, the problem with HTS technology is that the currently known high temperature superconductors are brittle ceramics which are expensive to manufacture and not easily formed into wires or other useful shapes. Therefore the applications for HTS have been where it has some other intrinsic advantage, e.g. in
- low thermal loss current leads for LTS devices (low thermal conductivity),
- RF and microwave filters (low resistance to RF), and
- increasingly in specialist scientific magnets, particularly where size and electricity consumption are critical (while HTS wire is much more expensive than LTS in these applications, this can be offset by the relative cost and convenience of cooling); the ability to ramp field is desired (the higher and wider range of HTS's operating temperature means faster changes in field can be managed); or cryogen free operation is desired (LTS generally requires liquid helium that is becoming more scarce and expensive).
Read more about this topic: Technological Applications Of Superconductivity