Significant improvement in critical current densities of C-doped MgB2 tapes made by high-energy ball milling

C-doped MgB2 tapes were fabricated using crystalline boron as one of the ball milled precursor powders. It was found that the ball milling process can strongly enhance the Jc values of MgB2 tapes and reduce the anisotropy of the Jc. At 4.2 K, the transport Jc of the 80 h milled C-doped MgB2 tapes sintered at 800 °C reaches 4.3 × 104 A cm−2 at 10 T and 2.2 × 104 A cm−2 at 12 T, respectively. These values are even higher than for tapes made from amorphous B powders. Ball milling can improve not only the upper critical field, by increasing the C substitution level in the MgB2 lattice, but also the flux pinning, by increasing grain boundaries, both of which result in the enhancement of Jc performance. Moreover, the high MgB2 phase fraction and large density of milled MgB2 tapes are beneficial to the active area. These results indicate that the use of crystalline B in combination with a ball milling process may be an economic method to harness the excellent properties of MgB2 for practical applications. (paper)