Splice Joints

Purpose of this work is to develop a basic understanding of materials and techniques that lead to low resistance splice joints without impacting the overall performance of the final HTS device. Splice joints can occur in a number of different scenarios with the splicing of shorter lengths of HTS conductors by wire manufacturers or by the end-users of HTS conductors during the fabrication and/or the repair of a given device.

It should be noted that this work is being carried out primarily on commercially available YBCO coated conductors with the recommendations of the wire manufacturers on splice fabrications as a starting point. Any departure from their recommendations has either been the result of feedback from an end-user of coated conductors or from the desire to simplify the number of steps to fabricate splice joints.

• Splice database
  This database is a compilation of the splices that have been fabricated and tested by ORNL and NIST-Boulder. Within each splice joint fabrication, a report has been put together providing the details of the splice joint fabrication, a picture of the splice joint, and the experimental data that has been collected by the splice joint. When possible, results from the mechanical testing that was done by NIST-Boulder for a given joint is provided. Further details can be found in a recent presentation and paper given at the 2009 CEC/ICMC in Tucson, AZ
• Solderability
  This section describes the work that has been done in the area of solderability that examines the materials that lead to good wetting of a given YBCO coated conductor
• Contact angle
  Contact angle was another measurement that was done to quantify the angle between a solder/flux system to a given YBCO coated conductor