Jan 23 2003
American Superconductor has announced that they have just been awarded a $750,000, 2 year grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to develop second generation high temperature superconductor wire for use in more powerful, higher resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers.
NMR machines are used to investigate the structures of molecules in various chemical, biological and pharmaceutical applications.
The grant will be used to develop superconducting wire that will enable the development of electromagnets for NMR’s with magnetic fields of 25 Tesla or higher. Existing machines boast 21.1 Tesla, and would benefit from a 20% increase in resolution if they had 25 Tesla magnetic fields available.
The second generation wire will also be suited to other applications such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), another application that the original wire was not suited to. These are just some of the markets that second generation superconducting wire will be suited to, while many more are bound to emerge.
For more information on superconductors, click here.