[putnambr]

Did you skip over "In almost all applications of superconductors, they don't use high-temperature ones for one simple reason: Material properties."

They're saying that LHC does not use a ceramic, and therefore high-temperature, superconductor; instead they use metallic (cooled) superconductors because they can be molded.

[kergonath]

The sentence still does not make sense because the superconductors in the LHC (though, rereading it a couple of times it is somewhat ambiguous) are not high temperature by any definition. Also, again, ceramic high-temperature superconductors are metallic, or they would not be conductors. “Ceramic” and “metallic” are not mutually exclusive in material sciences.

There are lots of reasons to use more classical superconductors in the LHC, just as in ITER. Some are design and engineering issues, as you mention. Another one is that the tapes we use for YBCO were not a practical thing when the LHC was designed. But now they are (though they haven’t been used in such a large scale) and you can bet that they’ll jump at any opportunity to get rid of the helium loop and take advantage of the stronger magnetic fields you can get with YBCO.

[jacquesm]

This should not be downvoted.

[penjelly]

can you make wires from cermets? Thats the point. we need a substance that is malleable(?) enough like copper wire that electrons can pass through. Pottery ceramic wont work like that.

[kergonath]

> can you make wires from cermets?

Well, nobody mentioned cermets, or wires, and there are plenty of applications for superconductors beyond wires. Even so, we are perfectly able to make fibre optics cables with silica, which is a ceramic.

> we need a substance that is malleable(?) enough like copper wire that electrons can pass through.

Malleability (actually, ductility) has nothing to do with electric conductivity. It can be useful depending on the use case, but for example on a printed circuit you don’t care about that. Not everything is a dangling wire.

YBCO a ceramic superconductor, it is used in thin films that are deposited on metallic substrates in tapes and it works well. See figure 2 of the paper here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271637455_Dipole_Ma... .

Also, you might not realise this but pretty much nothing is malleable at liquid helium temperature.

> Pottery ceramic wont work like that.

Sigh. Ceramics are not pottery, and more than 99% of the time do not have anything to do with pottery. Ceramics are compounds that are not intermetallic, typically oxides, sulphides, nitrides, etc. Some are bendy (though generally less than metallic alloys), some are hard, some are electric conductors, some are not. They have very diverse sets of properties.

They are everywhere in the chips on the device you use, in its display, in the power plants that make electrons move so you can use it, in any lithium-ion battery, etc. I don’t think I can name one device that does not involve ceramics. Even a shovel, either in the form of a passive layer that makes it stainless, or in the form of rust on it. None of that has anything to do with pottery.

[jacquesm]

I think this misconception stems from people thinking 'earthenware' or 'clay' when they hear 'ceramics'.

[jacquesm]

> can you make wires from cermets?

Yes, but the minimal bending radius would be far from impressive.

> Thats the point. we need a substance that is malleable(?) enough like copper wire that electrons can pass through.

So many assumptions here. Copper wire is but one form that is useful for energy transport. But superconductors don't need a lot of thickness and parallel layers of tape have enough flex in one dimension to be very useful. Usually they allow for complex routing by adding twists, like flatcable, but given the magnetic fields involved you don't want to do that in free space but firmly tied down to something (preferably something non-magnetic!).

> Pottery ceramic wont work like that.

Ceramics are a vast class of materials, which includes pottery ceramics but also many others which have a very large range and diversity of properties. They are essentially a whole branch on the tree of materials science that range from Tungsten Carbide to diamond to ordinary clay and a whole raft of others.

[MissingAFew]

If that's the point, then they are completely unqualified to be commenting.