High Temperature Superconductors

Dr. Raghu N. Bhattacharya is a senior scientist at NREL. He received his PhD degree in Electronic materials in 1982. Dr. Bhattacharya has held several research positions at The Weizmann Institute of Technology, The University of Texas at Arlington and Brooklyn College of CUNY. He has developed wet chemical processes for the deposition of a variety of the thin film semiconductors that are important for energy conversion, storage and transportation. At NREL, Dr. Bhattacharya contributed to the research and development of the highest efficiency CIGS solar cells in the world and was the leader of an effort to develop a low cost CIGS electrodeposition technology. His current research interests include CIGS thin film solar cells, electrodeposition of thin films for superconductor applications and wet deposition methods for growing buffer layers for YBCO superconductors. He has published over 150 technical papers in the field. He has been awarded fourteen patents. He is the author of two book chapters. He is also a Technical Advisory Board Member for SoloPower, a private company at California. M. Parans Paranthaman is the Distinguished Scientist and Acting Group Leader for the Materials Chemistry Group of the Chemical Sciences Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He is also the Task Leader for HTS Chemistry Projects at ORNL. He received his PhD degree in materials science and solid-state chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1988. He was a postdoctoral fellow (1988-1991) at the University of Texas Center for Materials Science and Engineering and a research associate (1991-1993) in the superconductivity laboratories at the University of Colorado. He joined the Chemistry Department at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in May 1993. He is a distinguished inventor at ORNL selected by the Battelle Institute of Columbus, Ohio. He is one of the co-inventors of the rolling-assisted biaxially-textured substrate (RABiTS) process for fabricating high-performance superconductor wires, which earned an R&D 100 Award in 1999. He has won another R&D 100 Award in 2007 for developing the LMO buffer cap for ion-beam assisted deposited (IBAD) MgO substrates. Recently, he won the second annual Nanotech Briefs Nano50 award for ORNL's high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wire technology "HTS Wires Enabled via 3D Self- Assembly of Insulating Nanodots". His present research focuses on the development of coated conductors using vacuum and nonvacuum processing techniques, materials synthesis, and characterization of high-temperature superconductors. He has authored or co-authored more than 300 publications in his area and has over 4000 citations to his work. He holds 19 U.S. patents related to the RABiTS technology. He has written several book chapters in the area of superconductivity.