2017 Volume 52 Issue 1 Pages 25-32
A new type of superconducting bulk magnet for compact nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) devices with high magnetic-field homogeneity has been developed by inserting an HTS film cylinder into a bulk superconductor bore. Annular 60 mmφ Eu-Ba-Cu-O bulk superconductors with a larger inner diameter (ID) of 36 mm were sandwiched between bulk superconductors with a smaller ID of 28 mm, and the total height of the bulk superconductor set was made to be 120 mm. The inner height of central wide bore space was optimized by magnetic-field simulation so that the influence of the bulk superconductor's paramagnetic moment on applied field homogeneity was minimized during the magnetization process. An HTS film cylinder, in which Gd-Ba-Cu-O tapes were wound helically in three layers around a copper cylinder, was inserted into the bulk bore in order to compensate for the inhomogeneous field trapped by the bulk superconductor. The superconducting bulk magnet composed of the above bulk superconductor set and the film cylinder were cooled by a GM pulse tube refrigerator and magnetized at 4.747 T using the field cooling (FC) method and a conventional superconducting coil magnet adjusted to below 0.5 ppm in magnetic-field homogeneity. The NMR measurement was conducted for an H2O sample with a diameter of 6.9 mm and a length of 10 mm by setting the sample in the center of the 20 mm ID room-temperature bore of the bulk magnet. The magnetic- field homogeneity derived from the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the 1H spectrum of H2O was 0.45 ppm. We confirmed that the HTS film inner cylinder was effective in maintaining the homogeneity of the magnetic field applied in the magnetization process, and as a result, a magnetic field with a homogeneity of less than 1 ppm can be generated in the bore of the bulk magnet without using shim coils.
