NISKAYUNA, NY--GE Global Research, the centralized research organization of the General Electric Company, today announced it has reached agreement on a collaborative research effort with Sumitomo Electric Industries (SEI) to develop industrial equipment using higher temperature superconducting materials. The discovery of higher temperature materials is seen as critical to enabling more cost-effective and widespread industrial applications of superconducting technology.

As part of the agreement, SEI will concentrate their research activities on superconducting wire development. The research team at Global Research will focus on the design and prototyping of new industrial applications for superconducting wires. GE engages in the development of a broad range of products, including medical diagnostic imagers, power-generating turbines, and industrial drives that benefit from more advanced superconducting materials.

"This collaboration with SEI will combine SEI's strength in superconducting wire technology with our experience in the design and development of industrial products using superconducting materials to enable new commercial applications in energy and health care," said Michael Idelchik, Vice President, Advanced Technology, GE Global Research said. "Together, we have a great opportunity to deliver new technology that greatly expands opportunities in the superconducting market."

"It is very important for higher temperature superconducting wires to be delivered into real commercial application through industry leading companies like GE. Since recent wire is reaching to enough industrialized level of quality, we believe this collaboration starts at the right time" said Dr. Ryosuke Hata, Managing Executive Officer and Deputy General Manager, R&D Unit, Sumitomo Electric.

Since the discovery of superconductivity in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, researchers around the world have been trying to exploit the phenomena in a variety of applications, including medical imaging, power generation, and motors. At the present time, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the only commercial product that has greatly benefited from this discovery. The need for cooling superconducting materials down to liquid helium temperatures (4K) has limited more widespread applications of this technology.

New advances to develop higher temperature materials have been made. The discovery of high temperature superconductors in 1986 with critical temperatures above liquid nitrogen temperature (77K) spurred renewed interest and research in superconductivity, and numerous efforts have been carried worldwide to bring High-Tc wires to commercial applications. In addition, SEI established the world's first commercial long length High-Tc wire mass production technology, which is called CT-OP (ConTrolled Over Pressure Technique), to produce DI-BSCCO wire (Dynamically Innovative Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-O wire) with 200 A of current carrying capacity at 77.3 K (liquid nitrogen temperature) within a 1mm2 cross sectional area without electric losses). But the development of even higher performance superconducting materials would create even more market opportunities.

SEI has developed one of the first successful exampled of use of superconducting wire within a power cable demonstration, i.e., DI-BSCCO cable was employed in the first in-grid power cable demonstration project sponsored by Department of Energy and New York Energy Research & Development Authority. After connecting to the grid successfully on July 2006, the DI-BSCCO cable has been supplying the power to approximately 70,000 households without any problems. The long-term test will be completed in the 2007-2008 timeframe.