The COST Action “NANOSCALE COHERENT HYBRID DEVICES FOR SUPERCONDUCTING QUANTUM TECHNOLOGIES” has been recently awarded. The Action includes 45 proponents from 18 countries. The Action will develop networking activities with an open, proactive and inclusive approach, managing a budget of about 0.5M€ for four years. Researchers from every participating country will be able to apply for funds to carry out short scientific missions or participate in other networking activities within the theme of the Action, regardless of the group or institution where they develop their main activity.

Prof. Teresa Puig has been selected  as a Managment Committee (MC) Member and Dr. Anna Palau as a substitute.

MC members will meet on the 18th October in Brussels to kick-off the project. 

COST is the longest-running European framework supporting trans-national cooperation among researchers, engineers and scholars across Europe. The Action is one of the 35 Actions approved by the Committee of Senior Officials on 23 June 2017.

Superconducting technologies are prime candidates to ripen quantum effects into devices and applications. The accumulated knowledge in decades of work in understanding superconductivity allows scientists now to make experiments by design, controlling relevant parameters in devices. A new field is emerging whose final objective is to improve appliances taking advantage of quantum effects, be it for dissipationless transport of current, generation of high magnetic fields, sensors or quantum information. The field will impact crucial areas for societal development, including energy, transport, medicine or computation. Quantum behavior is controlled by using hybrids of superconductors with magnets, insulators, semiconductors or normal metals. Traditionally, the scientific and technical communities working in superconductivity are spread across projects from different calls, whose activities put Europe at the frontier of research. The Action aims to address the pressing need for a common place to share knowledge and infrastructure and develop new cooperative projects.

The first granting period of the Action will start 1st November 2017 until 30 th April 2018.

 more information

An important representation of SUMAN group assisted to the 13^th European Conference on Applied Superconductivity, EUCAS 2017, held in the International Conference Centre of Geneva (CICG), hosted by CERN in collaboration with the University of Geneva and EPFL-SPC, and presented the work of the group.

Dr. Anna Palau give an invited entitled ” European progress toward Nanostructure engineering in coated conductors” at 4MO3 – Coated Conductor: Processing and Properties session.

Dr. Xavier Granados an oral communication entitled “Superconducting Medium Speed Synchronous Electrical Generator for 2MW Class Wind Mills” at 2LO2 – Rotating Machines and other Large Size Applications session.

Dr. Cornelia Pop an oral communication entitled ” Chemical solution deposition growth of low fluorine thick coated conductors of YBa₂Cu₃O₇ and YBa₂Cu₃O₇ nanocomposites with preformed BZO nanoparticles” at 4MO3 – Coated Conductor: Processing and Properties session.

The PhD student Laia Soler an oral communication entitled “Mechanisms of novel transient liquid assisted growth for ultrafast production of YBa₂Cu₃O7-x thin films” at 3MO3 – Cuprate Thin films session.

The PhD student Bernat Mundet an oral communication entitled “The challenging pinning landscape of YBa₂Cu₃O₇ thin films” at 1MO1 – Critical Current and Flux Pinning session.

And the group has also presnted the following posters:

• “ReBCO coated conductors for the future circular hadron collider beam screen” by Dr. Joffre Gutierrez
• “Physical Properties of Nanostructured, Liquid Assisted Grown, Epitaxial YBa₂Cu₃O₇-x Superconducting Films” by the PhD student Juri Banchewski
• “YBa₂Cu₃O₇-x nanocomposite films by CSD-ultrafast Transient Liquid Assisted Growth” by the PhD student Júlia Jareño
• “Thick YBa₂C₃O₇-x layers with ink jet printing single deposition” by the PhD student Bohores Villarejo
• “Preparation of YBa₂Cu₃O₇ – BaMO (M=Zr, Hf) superconductor nanocomposite using colloidal solution with preformed nanoparticles” by the PhD student Ziliang Li
• “Role of Oxygen exchange kinetics in the engineering of carrier concentration of YBa₂Cu₃O₇-δ films” by the PhD student Alex Stangl
• “High growth rate of YBCO films by Transient Liquid Assisted Growth by oxygen partial pressure control” and “Eutectic temperature determination of the BaO-CuO-O system in
  bulk and in films” by the PhD student Silvia Rasi

Other collaborators presented results obtained in collaboration with the group:

• “Dragging hysteresis forces in a linear displacer with Coated Conductor Stacks” poster by Prof. José López
• “Magnetization of rectangular 2G HTS stacks and dragging forces developed inside a multipolar magnetic channel: trapped field, current distribution and forces” poster by Prof. Miquel Carrera

We want to thank to all SUMAN participants for the successful orals and posters! Congratulations, good job!

Our PhD student, Alexander Stangl, has participated in the CERN Superconductivity Hackathon 2017 organized by FCC hh ee he from 22th to 24th September in Geneve (Switzerland). The primary target of the Hackathon is to work on solutions based on superconductor technology for three particularly interesting and promising future application fields.

Hey! My name is Pedro and I’m from Brazil. After finishing my Master in electrical engineering at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro I joined ICMAB’s Superconducting Materials and Nanostruture at Large Scale department as a PhD student. My research is focus on implementing superconducting wires in electrical equipment for the power grid system. I shall be working in the FASTGRID project seeking to enhance 2G HTS tape’s performance for higher electrical fields.

Hi guys!

My name is Artur and I am a new PhD student in the SUMAN group. Studying at the RWTH Aachen University, I developed expertise on Phase-Change materials performing PES, XRD, and low temperature transport measurements. Here at ICMAB, I am going to participate in promoting the electrical characterization and optimization of HTS coatings for the FCC at CERN. Looking forward to get all you guys to know! You can find me in office 1.19.

Our PhD student, Alejandro Fernandez, has attended to the 10th International Conference on Vortex Matter in Nanostructured Superconductors (VORTEX X) in Rhodes (Greece) from 9th to 14th of September. He had the oportunity to see many interesting oral presentations during these days and he also presented a poster (entitled: Tuning of the electronic structure in high Temperature Superconducting films at nanometric scale) gathering part of his research in the group. Of course, he could enjoy some free time relaxing in the beach or some night shows in the hotel. He hopes that some of you can join it in the following years.