Grant: Idea to Innovation

High-temperature superconductors (HTS) can carry large electric currents without loss when cooled at cryogenic temperatures. They are expected to play a key role in the decarbonization of our economies, namely in electrification of aircraft and in energy production by nuclear fusion. The high current density of modern HTS REBCO tapes is orders of magnitude ahead of competition, including copper. Polytechnique Montreal has developed a high-performance REBCO-CFD tape (proprietary technology) that minimizes the risk of degrading HTS tapes by a "quench", which occurs when superconducting tapes develop a local hot spot that leads to a dangerous and rapid release of energy followed by a thermal runaway. Many demonstrations on small-scale samples (10-100 cm long) have been achieved so far, but there is still no known way to produce REBCO-CFD tapes industrially. This I2I proposal aims to implement the first manufacturing method of REBCO-CFD tape at industrial production rates. We plan to optimize the manufacturing speed of REBCO-CFD tape and lower the manufacturing costs, with an ultimate demonstration production run of a 5 meters CFD-REBCO tape by mid-summer 2025. Achieving such an industrial-scale production at low cost and high throughput will unlock an enormous market of hundreds of thousands of km of CFD-REBCO tape for various industries, with a short-term focus on the aviation and nuclear fusion industry. This technology will be commercialized via a Canadian spin off company once industrial production of REBCO-CFD tape is demonstrated, in order to supply the growing demand from interested clients.