Pseudo-periodic nanostructuring of Ag-clad BSCCO-2223 multifilamentary tapes as a tool to tune in-field superconducting performance

A technology has been developed to create nanostructures by heavy-ion irradiation on "large area" surfaces of superconductors. The in-vacuum apparatus consists of a moving sample-holder, automatically driven at a given velocity in order to obtain the exposure of collimated zones of the moving target to a programmed ion fluence. The irradiation facility has been employed to implant 4.2 GeV gold-ions into a 30 cm long multifilamentary Ag/BSCCO-2223 tape, at the dose equivalent field of 0.5 T. The paper is focused on the enhanced performance and on the matching effects between the pseudo-periodic array of ion-induced columnar defects and the vortex lattice. The enhancements exhibit a maximum near the dose equivalent field, clearly pointing out the tunability of the performance through the modulation of the distance between nanotracks.