An ultra‐low‐loss superconducting inductor for power electronic circuits

Abstract

To break through the bottlenecks of the loss and size of conventional conductors and magnetic materials, replacing copper inductors by zero‐resistance superconducting inductors can be a promising solution. The experimental, theoretical and numerical investigations into the loss characteristics of an air‐core superconducting inductor have been carried out. All these results show that the loss from a superconducting inductor in the boost chopper circuit was reduced remarkably up to 373 times smaller than the loss from the magnetic‐core copper inductor having the same conditions. Moreover, the actual volume and weight of the superconducting inductor are only 5.61% and 10.97% of those of the copper inductor having the same inductance and current capacities. Advanced numerical models have been built to verify the experiments that their results of superconducting losses as well as the current and frequency dependencies are well matched. A compact, low‐loss and low‐cost cryostat has been designed to accommodate the superconducting inductor, which can further improve the practicability for superconducting inductor to be equipped into various power electronic applications. The superconducting inductor can lead power electronic devices towards ultra‐high‐efficiency power conversion.