Transport critical current density in Fe-sheathed nano-SiC doped MgB/sub 2/ wires

The nano-SiC doped MgB/sub 2//Fe wires were fabricated using a powder-in-tube method and an in-situ reaction process. The depression of T/sub c/ with increasing SiC doping level remained rather small due to the counterbalanced effect of Si and C co-doping. The high level SiC co-doping allowed creation of the intra-grain defects and nano-inclusions, which act as effective pinning centers, resulting in a substantial enhancement in the J/sub c/(H) performance. The transport J/sub c/ for all the wires is comparable to the magnetic J/sub c/ at higher fields despite the low density of the samples and percolative nature of current. The transport I/sub c/ for the 10wt% SiC doped MgB/sub 2//Fe reached 660A at 5K and 4.5T (J/sub c/=133000A/cm/sup 2/) and 540A at 20K and 2T (J/sub c/=108000A/cm/sup 2/). The transport J/sub c/ for the 10wt% SiC doped MgB/sub 2/ wire is more than an order of magnitude higher than for the state-the-art Fe-sheathed MgB/sub 2/ wire reported to date at 5K and 10T and 20K and 5T respectively. There is a plenty of room for further improvement in J/sub c/ as the density of the current samples is only 50%.