The New EC-Japan SUPER-IRON Project

July 27, 2012 (HE66).  On October 1, 2011, the European consortium lead by Prof. Marina Putti has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013).  Its FP/ call identifier is FP7-NMP-2011-EU-Japan, the topic NMP.2011.2.2-6 is “Fundamental properties of novel superconducting materials”.  The coordinated Japanese project, lead by Prof. Jun-ichi Shimojama, has received funding from the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The European partners from Austria, Germany, Italy and Switzerland and the Japanese partners (University of Tokyo, Kyushu University, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, AIST, and the National Institute for Materials Science, NIMS) are all listed at http://www.super-iron.eu/. 

The website given above contains all the information on the project which is accessible at present.  The project’s kick-off meeting of Super-Iron was held in Genoa, Italy, at the CNR-Spin Institute headquarters on December 12th-13th, 2011. 

This new cooperative project is oriented at exploring and evaluating the application potential of iron pnictides rather than elucidating their superconductivity mechanism.  The concept, rationale and objectives of the project are discussed in the website under “Concept” and “Objectives”.  Succinctly, these objectives are:

• Develop preparation methods of single crystals, thin films, and polycrystals;
• Qualify the ultimate potential of FeSCs for power applications, after the optimization of sample quality and grain boundary properties;
• Compare this potential with that of already existing superconductors (HTS, MgB2, Nb based superconductors).

Under “Results” listed are the first three 2012 European publications assigned to the project.  The Japanese publications will also be listed in the future.