Study of texturing in Bi-2212 powder for wire development*

High angle grain boundaries (HAGBs) result in weak links in the current flow in high temperature superconductors. Commercially available Bi-2212 round wires do not have a macroscopical texture due to formation of HAGBs during the Partial-melt processing. In this study, we developed two methods by which to align the particles of Bi-2212 powder in thin layers. The first utilizes magnetic fields and the second is uniaxial compression. Both methods generate highly textured Bi-2212 powder layers having a-b plane in the flat dimension, which is preferable to the following wire fabrication that can preserve the texture. The influence of the different applied fields and compression on the texture and microstructure is reported.