Preparation Of Nb3Al Superconductor By Powder Metallurgy And The Research On Its Superconducting Properties

With the development of modern society, as well as the over abuse of natural resorces, the globe is facing an unexpected energy crisis. In light of this, many new kinds of energy are being exploited among which, fusion enery is regarded as the most promising one and the ultimate solution to energy crisis. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor has been proposed under such background. The preparation of high-field magnet is one of the obstacles for the success of ITER project. Nb3Al, due to the excellent superconducting properties with a better strain/stress tolerance than Nb3Sn has become the No.1alternative for the superconducting material.However, high phase formation temperature which is more than1800℃and the deviation from right stoichiometry bring much difficulty to the fabrication of Nb3Al. So far, among other methods, RHQT is relatively mature and successful and it’s effective to overcome the difficulty of Nb3Al phase formation. Nevertheless, there are still many technical problems to be solved in RHQT method.In this thesis, aiming at those problems stated above, low-temperature powder metallurgy is adopted to prepare Nb3Al. In the first part, the result of hand milling method was analyzed as well as the data of doping of Sn. It shows that hand milling failed to prepare Nb3Al because of the lacking of enough phase formaiton driving forces. In the second part, Mechanical Alloying was used and Nb3Al was successfully prepared at low temperature. This achievement is very significant as its avoid using high temperature process. Moreover, the required equipment in this method is not specialized and expensive as in RHQT. The reason why the prepared samples do not possess ideal superconducting properties were analyzed.