cepts for HTSC three terminal like devices compatible with present micro electronics. PROGRAMMATIC ISSUES Two significant questions arise concerning the DARPA HTSC program: What if such oxide materials do not lead to significant improvements in present applications? Almost all of the processing approaches under development can be used for oxide or ceramic superconductors. Even if specific parameters such as the length of time for the oxygen anneal are changed and optimized, the approach can be transferred to the new material. This has already been demonstrated with the new Bismuth and Thallium based superconductors that are now being studied. With all the potential these new materials exhibit, it is difficult to believe that no application will emerge in the next 10 to 15 years. Regardless, the DARPA program will generate spinoffs other than ceramic superconductors that are important for materials technology. It will provide U.S. companies, universities, and agencies valuable experience in optimizing material properties and many fabricating capabilities. These materials also possess interesting magnetic and ferroelastic properties that could be developed for other applications. CONCLUSIONS For the United States to be successful in developing high-temperature superconducting materials and devices, the government needs to be involved. Consistent and reliable, long-term (10 years) funding at sufficient levels is essential and funds should be distributed throughout the government. Various schemes should be considered to encourage research and development including possible tax and capitalization incentives. Aggressive organizational approaches are also needed including, possible establishment of a civilian counterpart of DARPA, organization and participation in a Federal corporation or consortium (such as SEMETEC or a Japanesetype MITI-Ministry of International Trade and Industry) or a directed, coordinated government effort. Although the DARPA investment in fiscal year 1988 and thereafter will be significant, we will have to carefully chose among the opportunities and define our priorities wisely. We have done a "top down" analysis, based on many conversations with industry, of the ceramic materials forms we need-tapes, wires, thin films-for the products that are required-magnets, motors, transmission lines, microelectronic devices. We have participated in the Defense Science Board Task Force on Military System Applications of Superconductors to evaluate the greatest payoffs in military applications for our National Security. However, to provide a strong national industrial technology base for manufacturing products, as well as to provide the scientific underpinning for long term growth, we will need the cooperation and support of both industry and Government. Mr. ROE. Thank you very much. Dr. Notis? STATEMENT OF PROF. MICHAEL R. NOTIS, DEPARTMENT OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, LEHIGH UNIVERSITY, BETHLEHEM, PA Dr. Notis. I would like to thank the Chairman for the opportunity to testify today on a subject that I consider critical to the future development and growth of science and technology in the United States. I will divide my remarks into three focus areas: First, to describe my own research, together with that of my colleagues, related to the development of superconducting composite ceramic wire. Second, to describe the Lehigh University Consortium on Superconducting Ceramics, the first such consortium formed between industry, government laboratories and university. Lastly, to say something more general about U.S. funding of research for high temperature superconductivity, especially in relation to that of other countries such as Japan. I might say, my presentation is just a few minutes longer than most of the others so far, so if you will please bear with me. Anyone who has picked up a newspaper or a magazine recently is aware of the breakthroughs being achieved in the field of superconducting materials. Great excitement has been generated by the promise that these new materials hold. Although the existence of superconductivity has been known since the beginning of the century, until recently superconducting materials had to be cooled to prohibitively low temperatures before exhibiting such behavior. The discovery of "high-temperature" superconductivity, that is, with a transition temperature near or above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, now makes possible a myriad of new applications for superconductivity and even new technologies previously not considered feasible. The pace of research in the area of ceramic superconducting materials has been incredible. Researchers all over the world have made significant discoveries of new materials with higher and higher critical temperatures. Almost all of the materials discovered so far have been composed of elements such as lanthanum, yttrium, bismuth, thallium, strontium and calcium, in combination with copper and oxygen. These cuprates all possess a fairly complicated non-cubic structure based on a class of crystal structures known as the perovskites. Recently, a non-cuprate cubic perovskite superconductor has been reported by workers at AT&T. This material has significant implication for future development. Many other research groups have been concerned with the program of the low-or poor-values of critical transport time that these superconducting ceramic materials presently possess. At Lehigh, I have been involved with research, together with Profs. Betzalel Avitzur and Himanshu Jain, to try to fabricate these new ceramic superconductors into a composite wire configuration. This work has been funded by a small grant from the National Science Foundation and from the Lehigh University Consortium on Superconducting Ceramics [LUCSC], which I will describe later. One of the most desirable configurations for a useful superconductor is as a wire product. In this form it is useful as a conductor for DC or AC power transmission, and for the generation of high magnetic fields. The production of fine wire is critical to minimize problems with stabilization and to lower the AC or dynamic losses associated with changing field. If ceramic superconductors can be fabricated in a wire configuration, its potential for commercialization is considerable over a broad industrial spectrum, and this commercialization might be accomplished much earlier than if other forms, for example, thin films, of ceramic superconductors are required. For this reason, much research related to the fabrication of ceramic superconducting wire has already been performed. Wire can be fabricated either by wire drawing or extrusion. Wire drawing is a more economical and commercially desirable process because it can be easily made into a continuous operation. On the other hand, hydrostatic extrusion often allows for easy separation of experimental variables and is therefore a great benefit for fundamental studies or for situations where wire drawing is just not feasible. In our research, two different configurations for a composite ceramic wire have been used. In the first piece that I gave you, we have used a thick wall silver tube with a variety of cuprate superconducting ceramic powders packed inside; so far we have used this configuration with our experiments on wire fabrication by hydrostatic extrusion. This composite has been demonstrated to be in the superconducting state after final fabrication, by levitation testing over a magnet submersed in liquid nitrogen, and by direct transport measurements. The other configuration we have used has consisted of a thin wall silver tube containing the superconducting ceramic powder, both of which are placed inside a thick wall tube made of either stainless steel, nickel, or cooper. The higher strength outer material makes the assembly more amenable to wire drawing because of the higher wire pulling load that can be applied. Here also, the out tube may be removed after wire drawing for further processing. However, after interim annealing operations, these composites have shown significant reaction between the superconductor and the outer tube material, right through the thin silver interlayer. This has significant implication for the future development of commercial wire products, for fabrication of multifilamentary wires, and for joining technology in general. A major part of our current research is focused on the development of methods and the selection of materials that would eliminate this detrimental reaction. I would now like to turn to some of the funding issues related to superconducting ceramic research, for the amount and nature of the available funding support is critical to the ultimate success of this area of technology. Some of my colleagues at Lehigh have been concerned with superconducting ceramics for many years; for example, Professor Avitzur has been sponsored by the Department of Energy for his research on composite metal wires for high-field magnetic applications. However, research with the new ceramic superconductors requires expertise in many different areas including powder preparation, microstructure characterization, fabrication techniques, physical property measurement, etc. Too much of the research work performed so far has been done on poorly characterized material obtained from relatively non-reproducible production methods; much of this work will have to be repeated under better laboratory conditions. At Lehigh, we have been aggressive in terms of our desire to overcome many of these problems through the formation of a consortium in this research area. As you may know, Congressman Ritter has been a strong proponent of consortia for superconductivity research and we are particularly thankful for his help in the initiation of our own program. The Lehigh University Consortium on Superconducting Ceramics [LUCSC] is currently composed of 11 industrial corporations and government laboratories who provide funding to our university. Some of these companies have been involved with research in superconductivity for many years; others are newcomers to the field. This funding is matched to a significant degree by the state of Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin Partnership Program. In all, the consortium has operated during the past year with about $400,000 in funding. These funds have been used to develop central laboratories for superconducting ceramic powder preparation and charac terization, and for physical property measurements; and to perform specific research projects related to fabrication of superconducting wire, tape casting, development of high critical current density, solid state chemistry, microstructural studies, high frequency measurements and ultrasonic measurement of the elastic behavior of superconductors. The availability of these funds has enabled the growth of a strong interdisciplinary character to our research. The consortia arrangement has enabled us to interact with members of the industrial and government laboratory communities and has had significant influence on the perception of our own research work. We hope that it enhances technology transfer and commercialization in the future. Despite our initial success, as we are negotiating for the second year funding for the operation of the consortia, we are experiencing some problems. This is due mainly to funding difficulties encountered by our government_laboratory members relating to a general DOĎ freeze on all R&D commitments, and to the realization by one or two industrial members that the development of useful applications of superconductive materials will not take place in a short period to time. When the new high-Tc superconductors were first discovered, there was much hope and speculation that they could be moved quickly into the marketplace. This has proved not to be true and correspondingly the intensity of interest has to some extent decreased. I would, therefore, like to comment on my views concerning the need for long-term focused government support of research in superconductivity. In July of 1987, at a conference on superconductivity in Washington, DC, President Reagan announced a broad Federal program an "eleven-point superconductivity initiative"-to promote research and speed commercial development. Congressmen David McCurdy and Don Ritter have both introduced bills related to superconductivity, originally calling for funding in fiscal 1989. These bills have been merged into compromise legislation with funding probably not until 1990. We are, therefore, already one year off our original target. As pointed out by Congressman Ritter, the DARPA program for superconductor manufacturing and processing technology is badly underfunded because of other budgetary pressures. I am also concerned about the nature of the DARPA program itself. It is not clear how the research findings from this program will be disseminated to the general science community and to industry. DARPA's work is unclassified but there has been little information on the research being performed by the industrial groups being supported through the program. Except for the DARPA-DOD program, little new funding has actually come through for superconductivity research. Instead, Federal agencies continue to reallocate funds from other budget areas. This has caused a number of problems. For example, the Materials Research Division of NSF requested a 9.8 percent increase for fiscal 1988. It received a 1.8 percent increase. The Low Temperature Physics Program, which funded Paul Chu's work, requested a 10 percent increase for 1988. It received a 2.5 percent increase. Other previously funded grants within the Division were asked to cut their existing funding by 10 percent. The real increase in funds into the Low-Temperature Physics Program was small, and the Program Director has left the Foundation. The existing non-superconductivity research work is now underfunded and these researchers are feeling the pressure. As well, program managers in other agencies who also operate with a peer review system find that because of the rapid pace of research in this area, the superconductivity research that had been proposed has already been performed by the investigator or by another research laboratory by the time the peer review process is complete. We must find new ways to plan and fund research in an environment which moves with the rapid pace we have in today's world. Finally, I would like to make some comments comparing our R&D situation to that of other countries, in particular, to that of Japan. American businessmen are often frustrated by the propensity of Japanese for prolonged and detailed negotiation over contractural agreements and the time-consuming group consensus approach that they take. However, once the plans and negotiations are successfully completed, the Japanese dedicate themselves fully to the project and are prepared for long-term commitment. Therefore, even though the Japanese may not be the first to develop and market a product, they have a great ability to know when to become involved, and once in the game, they have great endurance. The Japanese approach to scientific and technological research is similar. Good planning and a national policy with focused goals activates and commits the entire industrial system to a long-term effort for success. The Japanese approach to commercialization is also unique. Small products, sometimes demonstrating only trivial aspects of a new technology, are introduced into the marketplace with high consumer visibility. A large number of such products gives industry broad experience dealing with the new technology as a whole, while at the same time building a strong consumer base. An excellent example of this entire process is the introduction of "fine" or high-technology ceramics in Ĵapan during the last decade. Japan has a long history and large industry based related to traditional ceramic manufacture. Although in general Japan is a resource-poor country, the raw materials from which ceramics are made are available. In order to take advantage of the perceived future growth in ceramics and other new materials, MITI sponsored a major national effort of the development of fine ceramics. Although large corporations play a major role in this development area, Government Industrial Research Institutes provide R&D guidance and direct development assistance for new products to small companies without R&D facilities. Fine ceramics have been introduced early into the marketplace by the fabrication of zirconia and silicon nitride scissors, hammers, golf clubs, knives—some which I have put up on the table-all available in department stores throughout Japan. A ceramic turbocharger rotor blade is now available on at least one make of Japanese sports car. Japanese firms now dominate the world on ceramic packages for electronic devices. The approach of the Japanese to develop and commercialize high-Tc superconductivity as a broad technology has been even more intense. Japan has already gotten a good start in this field, |