APC orientation superconductor and process of manufacture

Claim 1

In a Method for producing a superconductor comprising the steps of combining a plurality of metal bodies to form a composite structure, said metal bodies being selected from the transition metals niobium, titanium, zirconium or vanadium, alternate bodies being formed of different transition metals to form pairs, reacting the transition metals to cause diffusion of at least one metal into the other metal to form a ductile superconducting alloy as a result of this diffusion, limiting the extent of the reaction so as to maintain the cross-sectional thickness of pure or nearly pure essentially undiffused transition metal along with the superconducting alloy in at least one of each said pair of transition metals which is about equal to the thickness of diffused superconducting alloy, with a partially diffused zone separating each superconducting zone from each undiffused zone, mechanically reducing the composite structure and providing further diffusion to produce a superconducting layer in contact with a non superconducting layer in each said pair, each said layer being less than 1000 A° thick, the improvement wherein planar layers of metal which are to provide the superconducting and normal metal layers are coreduced to produce a multilayer wire having a rectangular cross section, with a greater width than thickness, whose layers are parallel to the long dimension of the cross section, and forming a superconducting wire from said coreduced wire to provide a product having a multiplicity of rectangular superconductor wires with their long cross-sectional dimensions aligned.