Medicine · In service today
NMR spectrometers
The magnet that resolves a protein structure runs at a few kelvin.
The record behind NMR spectrometers
The first 1.2 GHz protein NMR data · BrukerSuperconductors in NMR spectrometers
NMR resolution scales with field, and structural biology has spent fifty years buying resolution by buying tesla. The highest-field spectrometers pass the point where niobium-titanium has anything left, so the inner coils are niobium-tin and, at the very top, high-temperature conductor. This is the application that pulls a new conductor into production before anyone else can afford it. That makes it a useful leading indicator for the magnet industry as a whole.
What is stopping NMR spectrometers
Homogeneity and drift, held to an extraordinary tolerance in a magnet that is never switched off. A conductor that satisfies that needs joints good enough to persist for years, which is a far stricter requirement than carrying the current in the first place, and it is one of the reasons high-temperature conductors have been slow to arrive here.
What a better material would change for NMR spectrometers
Every jump in field here has come from a new conductor rather than a better magnet design, and the next one will be the same. A high-temperature conductor with joints good enough to run persistent would move the ceiling again, and structural biology would spend it the week it arrived.
Conductors used in NMR spectrometers
Near NMR spectrometers, in medicine
SuperMatics is a platform infrastructure company for superconducting devices: software that finds the material and the process, lab work that makes and measures it, and pilot manufacturing with industrial partners.If you are working on something in this field and a material is what stands in the way, tell us about it.