Completely revised and updated, the second edition of the Handbook of Superconductivity is now available in three stand-alone volumes. As a whole they cover the depth and breadth of the field, drawing on an international pool of respected academics and industrial engineers. The three volumes provide hands-on guidance to the manufacturing and processing technologies associated with superconducting materials and devices. A comprehensive reference, the handbook supplies a tutorial on techniques for the beginning graduate student and a source of ancillary information for practicing scientists. The past twenty years have seen rapid progress in superconducting materials, which exhibit one of the most remarkable physical states of matter ever to be discovered. Superconductivity brings quantum mechanics to the scale of the everyday world where a single, coherent quantum state may extend over a distance of metres, or even kilometres, depending on the size of a coil or length of superconducting wire. Viable applications of superconductors rely fundamentally on an understanding of this intriguing phenomena and the availability of a range of materials with bespoke properties to meet practical needs. This first volume covers the fundamentals of superconductivity and the various classes of superconducting materials, which sets the context for volumes 2 and 3. Volume 1 ends with a tutorial on phase diagrams, and a glossary relevant to all 3 volumes.
Professor David Cardwell, FREng, is Professor of Superconducting Engineering and Pro-Vice-Chancellor responsible for Strategy and Planning at the University of Cambridge. He was Head of the Engineering Department between 2014 and 2018. Prof. Cardwell, who established the Bulk Superconductor research group at Cambridge in 1992, has a world-wide reputation on the processing and applications of bulk high temperature superconductors. He was a founder member of the European Society for Applied Superconductivity (ESAS) in 1998 and has served as a Board member and Treasurer of the Society for the past 12 years. He is an active board member of three international journals, including Superconductor Science and Technology, and has authored over 380 technical papers and patents in the field of bulk superconductivity since 1987. He has given invited presentations at over 70 international conferences and collaborates widely around the world with academic institutes and industry. Prof. Cardwell was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2012 in recognition of his contribution to the development of superconducting materials for engineering applications. He is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He was awarded a Sc.D. by the University of Cambridge in 2014 and an honorary D.Sc. by the University of Warwick in 2015.
Professor David Larbalestier is Krafft Professor of Superconducting Materials at Florida State University and Chief Materials Scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. He was for many years Director of the Applied Superconductivity Center, first at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (1991-2006) before moving the Center to the NHMFL at Florida State University, stepping down as Director in 2018. He has been deeply interested in understanding superconducting materials that are or potentially useful as conductors and made major contributions to the understanding and betterment of Nb-Ti alloys, Nb3Sn, YBa2Cu3O7-, Bi2Sr2Ca1Cu2Ox, (Bi,Pb)2Sr2Ca2Cu3Ox, MgB2 and the Fe-based compounds. Fabrication of high field test magnets has always been an interest, starting with the first high field filamentary Nb3Sn magnets while at Rutherford Laboratory and more recently the world’s highest field DC magnet (45.5 T using a 14.5 T REBCO insert inside a 31 T resistive magnet). These works are described in ~490 papers written in partnership with more than 70 PhD students and postdocs, as well as other collaborators. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003 and is a Fellow of the APS, IOP, IEEE, MRS and AAAS. He received his B.Sc. (1965) and Ph.D. (1970) degrees from Imperial College at the University of London and taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1976-2006.
Professor Alex Braginski is retired Director of a former Superconducting Electronics Institute at the Research Center Jülich (FZJ), retired Professor of Physics at the University of Wuppertal, both in Germany, and currently a guest researcher at FZJ. He received his doctoral and D.Sc. degrees in Poland, where in early 1950s he pioneered the development of ferrite technology and subsequently their industrial manufacturing, for which he received a Polish National Prize. He headed the Polfer Research Laboratory there until leaving Poland in 1966. At the Westinghouse R&D Center in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, he then in turn managed magnetics, superconducting materials and superconducting electronics groups until retiring in 1989. Personally contributed there to technology of thin-film Nb3Ge conductors and Josephson junctions (JJs), both A15 and high-Tc, also epitaxial. Invited by FZJ, he joined it and contributed to development of high-Tc JJs and RF SQUIDs. After retiring in 1989, was Vice President R&D at Cardiomag Imaging, Inc. in Schenectady, NY, USA, 2000-2002. Co-edited and co-authored The SQUID Handbook, 2004-2006, several book chapters, and authored or co-authored well over 200 journal publications and 17 patents. He founded and served as Editor of the IEEE CSC Superconductivity News Forum (SNF), 2007-2017. Is Fellow of IEEE and APS, and recipient of the IEEE CSC Award for Continuing and Significant Contributions in the Field of Applied Superconductivity, 2006.
