INTRODUCTION

In 1911 , Kamerlingh Onnes found that the

electrical resistivity of some metals , alloys
and compounds drops suddenly to zero when
the specimen is cooled below a certain
temperature . this phenonmenon is called
“superconductivity” and cooled specimen is
called “superconductors”.

The temperature tc below which a material

undergoes a transition from a state of normal
conductivity to a superconducting stage is called
critical temperature and is different for different
materials . The normally good conductors like
Cu,Ag,Au,Li,Na,k etc do not show
superconductivity even at low as a small fraction
of 1 K.
Superconducting electromagnets produce the
large magnetic fields required in the world's
largest particle accelerators, in MRI machines
used for diagnostic imaging of the human body, in
magnetically levitated trains and in
superconducting magnetic energy storage
systems. But at the other extreme
superconductors are used in SQUID
magnetometers, which can measure the tiny
magnetic fields associated with electrical activity
in the brain, and there is great interest in their
potential as extremely fast switches for a new
generation of very powerful computers.

PROPERTIES OF SUPERCONDUCTORS

1. ZERO ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE

The most obvious characteristic of a
superconductor is the complete disappearance of
its electrical resistance below a temperature that
is known as its critical temperature. Experiments
have been carried out to attempt to detect
whether there is any small residual resistance in
the superconducting state. A sensitive test is to
start a current flowing round a superconducting
ring and observe whether the current decays. The
current flowing in the superconducting loop
clearly cannot be measured by inserting an
ammeter into the loop, since this would
introduce a resistance and the current would
rapidly decay.
The magnitude of the magnetic field is directly
proportional to the current circulating in the
loop, and the field can be measured without
drawing energy from the circuit. Experiments of
this type have been carried out over periods of
years, and the magnetic field – and hence the
superconducting current – has always remained
constant within the precision of the measuring
equipment. Such a persistent current is
characteristic of the superconducting state. From
the lack of any decay of the current it has been
deduced that the resistivity ρ of a
superconductor is less than 10−26 Ω m. This is
about 18 orders of magnitude smaller than the
resistivity of copper at room temperature (
10−8 Ω m).
Resistivity is the reciprocal of conductivity, that
is, ρ = σ−1. We prefer to describe a
superconductor by ρ = 0, rather than by σ = .

2. CRITICAL MAGNETIC FIELD

An important characteristic of a superconductor
is that its normal resistance is restored if a
sufficiently large magnetic field is applied. The
nature of this transition to the normal state
depends on the shape of the superconductor and
the orientation of the magnetic field, and it is
also different for pure elements and for alloys. If
an increasing magnetic field is applied parallel to
a long thin cylinder of tin at a constant
temperature below the critical temperature,
then the cylinder will make a transition from the
superconducting state to the normal state when
the field reaches a well-defined strength. This
field at which the superconductivity is destroyed
is known as the critical magnetic field strength,
Bc. If the field is reduced, with the temperature
held constant, the tin cylinder returns to the
superconducting state at the same critical field
strength Bc.
Experiments indicate that the critical magnetic
field strength depends on temperature, and the
form of this temperature dependence is shown in
Figure 11 for several elements. At very low
temperatures, the critical field strength is
essentially independent of temperature, but as
the temperature increases, the critical field
strength drops, and becomes zero at the critical
temperature. At temperatures just below the
critical temperature it requires only a very small
magnetic field to destroy the superconductivity.
The temperature dependence of the critical field
strength is approximately parabolic:

where Bc(0) is the extrapolated value of the

critical field strength at absolute zero and Tc is
the critical temperature. The curves in Figure 11
indicate that a superconductor with a high
critical temperature Tc has a high critical field
strength Bc at T = 0 K, confirms this correlation
for a larger number of superconducting elements.

Figure 11 The temperature dependences of the

critical magnetic field strengths of mercury,
tin, indium and thallium.

3. THE MEISSNER EFFECT

The second defining characteristic of a
superconducting material is much less obvious
than its zero electrical resistance. It was over 20
years after the discovery of superconductivity
that Meissner and Ochsenfeld published a paper
describing this second characteristic. They
discovered that when a magnetic field is applied
to a sample of tin, say, in the superconducting
state, the applied field is excluded, so that B = 0
throughout its interior. This property of the
superconducting state is known as the Meissner
effect.
The exclusion of the magnetic field from a
superconductor takes place regardless of whether
the sample becomes superconducting before or
after the external magnetic field is applied. In
the steady state, the external magnetic field is
cancelled in the interior of the superconductor by
opposing magnetic fields produced by a steady
screening current that flows on the surface of the
superconductor.
It is important to recognise that the exclusion of
the magnetic field from inside a superconductor
cannot be predicted by applying Maxwell's
equations to a material that has zero electrical
resistance. We shall refer to a material that has
zero resistance but does not exhibit the Meissner
effect as a perfect conductor, and we shall show
that a superconductor has additional properties
besides those that can be predicted from its zero
resistance.

Consider first the behaviour of a perfect

conductor. We showed in the previous subsection
that the flux enclosed by a continuous path
through zero resistance material – a perfect
conductor – remains constant, and this must be
true for any path within the material, whatever
its size or orientation. This means that the
magnetic field throughout the material must
remain constant, that is, ∂B/∂t = 0. The
consequences of this are shown in Figure 10 parts
(a) and (b).

Figure 10 A comparison of the response of a

perfect conductor, (a) and (b), and a
superconductor, (c) and (d), to an applied
magnetic field.
In part (a) of this figure, a perfect conductor is
cooled in zero magnetic field to below the
temperature at which its resistance becomes
zero. When a magnetic field is applied, screening
currents are induced in the surface to maintain
the field at zero within the material, and when
the field is removed, the field within the
material stays at zero. In contrast, part (b) shows
that cooling a perfect conductor to below its
critical temperature in a uniform magnetic field
leads to a situation where the uniform field is
maintained within the material. If the applied
field is then removed, the field within the
conductor remains uniform, and continuity of
magnetic field lines means there is a field in the
region around the perfect conductor. Clearly, the
magnetisation state of the perfect conductor
depends not just on temperature and magnetic
field, but also on the previous history of the
material.
Contrast this with the behaviour of a
superconductor, shown in Figure 10 parts (c) and
(d). Whether a material is cooled below its
superconducting critical temperature in zero
field, (c), or in a finite field, (d), the magnetic
field within a superconducting material is always
zero. The magnetic field is always expelled from
a superconductor. This is achieved spontaneously
by producing currents on the surface of the
superconductor. The direction of the currents is
such as to create a magnetic field that exactly
cancels the applied field in the superconductor. It
is this active exclusion of magnetic field – the
Meissner effect – that distinguishes a
superconductor from a perfect conductor, a
material that merely has zero resistance. Thus we
can regard zero resistance and zero magnetic
field as the two key characteristics of
superconductivity.
Perfect diamagnetism
Diamagnetism is due to currents induced in
atomic orbitals by an applied magnetic field. The
induced currents produce a magnetisation within
the diamagnetic material that opposes the
applied field, and the magnetisation disappears
when the applied field is removed. However, this
effect is very small: the magnetisation generally
reduces the applied field by less than one part in
105 within the material. In diamagnetic material,
B = μμ0H, with the relative permeability μ slightly
less than unity.
Superconductors take the diamagnetic effect to
the extreme, since in a superconductor the field
B is zero – the field is completely screened from
the interior of the material. Thus the relative
permeability of a superconductor is zero.

4.CRITICAL CURRENT
The current density for a steady current flowing
along a wire in its normal state is essentially
uniform over its cross-section. A consequence of
this is that the magnetic field strength B within a
wire of radius a, carrying current I, increases
linearly with distance from the centre of the
wire, and reaches a maximum value of μ0I / 2 a at
the surface of the wire . Within a
superconductor, however, the magnetic field B is
zero.
The magnetic field strength B just outside the
surface of the wire is μ0I / 2 a. It follows that if
the current flowing in a superconducting wire is
increased, eventually the field strength at the
surface of the wire will exceed Bc and the sample
will revert to its normal state. The maximum
current that a wire can carry with zero resistance
is known as its critical current, and for a long
straight wire the critical current Ic is given by
Ic = 2 aBc / μ0. A current greater than Ic will cause
the wire to revert to its normal state. This
critical current is proportional to the radius of
the wire.
We saw that the critical field strength is
dependent on temperature, decreasing to zero as
the temperature is increased to the critical
temperature. This means that the
superconducting current that a wire can carry
will also decrease as the temperature gets closer
to the critical temperature. Because of this, in
real applications superconductors generally
operate at temperatures less than half of the
critical temperature, where the critical field
strength, and therefore the critical current, is
greater than 75 per cent of the maximum value.
Now, the current carried by a superconducting
wire actually flows in a thin layer at the surface;
it cannot be restricted to an infinitesimal layer,
because that would lead to an infinite current
density. This means that the magnetic field
penetrates into this thin layer, and we derive
there relationships between the field and the
current density.
The magnetic field at the surface of a
superconductor may have a contribution from an
external source of magnetic field, as well as from
the field produced by the current in the wire.
This external field will set up screening currents
in the surface layer of the material. The
transition to the normal state then occurs when
the vector sum of the current densities at the
surface due to the current in the wire and due to
the screening current exceeds the critical current
density, or, equivalently, when the magnitude of
the vector sum of the magnetic fields that are
present at the surface of the wire exceeds the
critical field strength.
CLASSIFICATION OF SUPERCONDUCTOR

1.TYPE-I SUPERCONDUCTORS: The

superconductor in which magnetic field is
totally excluded from the interior of the
superconductor below a certain magnetising
field Hc and at Hc
the material looses superconductivity and the
magnetic field penetrates fully are termed as
Type-1 superconductors.
We saw that superconductivity in a tin cylinder is
destroyed when an applied field with strength B0
> Bc is applied parallel to the cylinder. However,
when the field is applied perpendicular to the
cylinder, as shown in Figure 18, the field strength
at points A and C is substantially greater than the
strength of the applied field at a distance from
the cylinder, and this is indicated by the
increased concentration of the field lines shown
near these points. In fact, it can be shown that
the field strength at these points is a factor of
two greater than the applied field strength. This
means that as the applied field B0 is increased,
the field at points A and C will reach the critical
field strength Bc when B0 = Bc/2.
Figure 18 The magnetic field B in a plane
perpendicular to the axis of a
superconducting cylinder (shown in cross-
section) for an applied field with B0 < Bc/2.
.
2.TYPE-II SUPERCONDUCTORS: The
superconductor in which the material looses
magnetisation gradually rather then suddenly
are termed as Type-2 superconductor.

Figure 23 Surface of a superconducting alloy

that had a magnetic field applied
perpendicular to the surface. The dark
regions were normal and the light regions
 superconducting. In this case, small
ferromagnetic particles were applied to the
surface, and collected where the field
strength was largest. The particles
remained in position when the specimen
warmed up to room temperature, and the
surface was then imaged with an electron
microscope.

QUANTUM THEORY OF
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY : BCS THEORY
BCS Theory of Superconductivity
In 1957, Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer (BCS)
proposed a theory that explained the microscopic
origins of superconductivity, and could
quantitatively predict the properties of
superconductors. Prior to this, there was
Ginzburg-Landau theory, suggested in 1950,
which was a macroscopic theory. This will not be
dealt with here, but Ginzburg-Landau theory can
be derived from BCS theory.
Cooper Pair Formation
Mathematically, BCS theory is complex, but relies
on an earlier 'discovery' by Cooper (1956), who
showed that the ground state of a material is
unstable with respect to pairs of 'bound'
electrons. These pairs are known as Cooper pairs
and are formed by electron-phonon interactions -
an electron in the cation lattice will distort the
lattice around it, creating an area of greater
positive charge density around itself. Another
electron at some distance in the lattice is then
attracted to this charge distortion (phonon) - the
electron-phonon interaction. The electrons are
thus indirectly attracted to each other and form
a Cooper pair - an attraction between two
electrons mediated by the lattice which creates a
'bound' state of the two electrons:
The formation of Cooper pairs is supported by the
fact that BCS and the Ginzburg-Landau theories
predict the charge and mass of the supercurrent
'particle' to be 2e and 2Me respectively.
Cooper Pairs - BCS Theory Supercurrent
Carriers
The Cooper pairs within the superconductor are
what carry the supercurrent, but why do they
experience such perfect conductivity?
Mathematically, because the Cooper pair is more
stable than a single electron within the lattice, it
experiences less resistance (although the
superconducting state cannot be made up entirely
of Cooper pairs as this would lead to the collapse
of the state).
Physically, the Cooper pair is more resistant to
vibrations within the lattice as the attraction to
its partner will keep it 'on course' - therefore,
Cooper pairs move through the lattice relatively
unaffected by thermal vibrations (electron-
phonon interactions) below the critical
temperature.

APPLICATIONS
1.SQUID :The superconducting quantum
interference device (SQUID) consists of two
superconductors separated by thin insulating
layers to form two parallel Josephson junctions.
The device may be configured as a magnetometer
to detect incredibly small magnetic fields -- small
enough to measure the magnetic fields in living
organisms. Squids have been used to measure the
magnetic fields in mouse brains to test whether
there might be enough magnetism to attribute
their navigational ability to an internal compass.
2. SUPERCONDUCTING MAGNETS :Type II
superconductors such as niobium-tin and niobium-
titanium are used to make the coil windings for
superconducting magnets. These two materials
can be fabricated into wires and can withstand
high magnetic fields. Typical construction of the
coils is to embed a large number of fine filaments
( 20 micrometers diameter) in a copper matrix.
The solid copper gives mechanical stability and
provides a path for the large currents in case the
superconducting state is lost. These
superconducting magnets must be cooled with
liquid helium. Superconducting magnets can use
solenoid geometries as do ordinary
electromagnets.
3. Superconducting Transmission Lines:
Since 10% to 15% of generated electricity is
dissipated in resistive losses in transmission lines,
the prospect of zero loss superconducting
transmission lines is appealing. In prototype
superconducting transmission lines at Brookhaven
National Laboratory, 1000 MW of power can be
transported within an enclosure of diameter 40
cm. This amounts to transporting the entire
output of a large power plant on one enclosed
transmission line. This could be a fairly low
voltage DC transmission compared to large
transformer banks and multiple high voltage AC
transmission lines on towers in the conventional
systems. The superconductor used in these
prototype applications is usually niobium-
titanium, and liquid helium cooling is required.
4. Superconducting Maglev Trains:
While it is not practical to lay down
superconducting rails, it is possible to construct a
superconducting system onboard a train to repel
conventional rails below it. The train would have
to be moving to create the repulsion, but once
moving would be supported with very little
friction. There would be resistive loss of energy
in the currents in the rails. Ohanian reports an
engineering assessment that such superconducting
trains would be much safer than conventional rail
systems at 200 km/h.
A Japanese magnetically levitated train set a
speed record of 321 mi/h in 1979 using
superconducting magnets on board the train. The
magnets induce currents in the rails below them,
causing a repulsion which suspends the train
above the track.

Numerical