Tailored VxOy Metal--Insulator-Transition Oxides for Temperature-Triggered Smart Insulation in Superconducting Coils

Abstract

Smart insulation is a turn-to-turn layer that insulates in normal operation and conducts only near a hot spot. It could combine the fast ramping of insulated coils with the passive energy dump of non-insulated coils. Metal-insulator transition (MIT) oxides are natural candidates, but the only one tested in a coil so far, V2O3, switches at 150-170 K, far above the 30-70 K window useful for REBCO magnets. We explore the vanadium-oxygen system to lower the transition. TGA redox processing produced multi-phase powders with an effective transition near 127 K, about 25 K below V2O3. Hydrothermal V3O7, hydrated or annealed, was far too resistive and showed no usable transition. V2O3-epoxy specimens provided a robust reference and an acceptance criterion. Cryogenic measurements revealed a reproducible thermal hysteresis, and the measured specific heat of V2O3 corrects earlier model inputs by close to two orders of magnitude. A first electro-thermal model reproduces current sharing through the smart-insulation layer. Doped V2O3 and V8O15 are identified as the next targets.