Fujikura Ltd. (President & CEO: Naoki Okada) is pleased to announce that Fujikura Ltd. has delivered mass-production volumes of rare-earth-based high-temperature superconducting tapes to Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), which is building the world's first commercially relevant fusion machine in the United States and has begun expanding production capacity for these tapes.

CFS was spun out from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to build on decades of research combined with new groundbreaking high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology and the speed of the private sector to bring fusion energy to market. The mission is to deploy fusion power plants to meet global decarbonization goals as fast as possible. Supported by the world’s leading investors, CFS is uniquely positioned to deliver limitless, clean, fusion power to combat climate change.

CFS HTS magnets will enable significantly stronger magnetic fields and as a result significantly smaller tokamaks. Fusion power plants will have advantages over traditional power plants as they will be carbon-free, dispatchable, have limitless fuel supply, and are inherently safer than other types of plants.

Since the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, Fujikura Ltd. has continued to be a world-class leader in both research and development of high-temperature superconductivity. We are now providing high-performance, highly uniform rare-earth-based high-temperature superconducting tapes in Japan and overseas, with high praise.

Fujikura's rare-earth-based high-temperature superconducting tapes are crucial for creating a fusion machine. We have high current capability in an ultra-high magnetic field and high strength capabilities. We are proud to announce that after years of advancement of our technological capabilities, Fujikura Ltd. has now established mass production technology to meet these requirements.

“We are excited to be working with Fujikura Ltd. as one of our partners providing HTS superconductors for use in our fusion magnets for SPARC," said Brandon Sorbom, Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of CFS. "We have been extremely impressed with the performance of Fujikura HTS and look forward to working with them to scale up their production to meet the high volumes of superconducting tape the fusion industry will need as it grows."

Through our deliveries to CFS, Fujikura Ltd. will continue to expand our production capacity, enhance our presence in rare-earth-based high-temperature superconductors, and contribute to the realization of a carbon-neutral society. This is just one way Fujikura Ltd. contributes to future next-generation superconducting devices.

​[Reference: Glossary]

High-temperature superconducting tapes
Superconductivity is a phenomenon in which the electrical resistance becomes zero when the temperature falls below a certain level. Superconductivity comprises low-temperature superconductivity (metallic superconductivity), which uses liquid helium (Boiling point: -269°C) for cooling, and high-temperature superconductivity (oxide superconductivity), which manifests superconductivity even at high temperatures without using liquid helium.

Rare-earth high-temperature superconducting tape
Superconductive tape on which oxide superconductive material made of substances such as rare earth is deposited through an intermediate layer onto a tape-like metal substrate such as a long metal tape with a nickel-based alloy. The properties of high-temperature superconducting tape are excellent characteristic, even in a magnetic field. This tape is expected to be widely used to realize future next-generation superconducting devices in the future.

Fusion
The source of the sun's energy, nuclear fusion is a reaction in which the nuclei of atoms with small mass fuse with each other, generating enormous amounts of energy in the process. Since the source of this resource is abundantly contained in seawater and does not produce carbon dioxide, it is considered a promising power generation method for realizing a carbon-neutral society in the future.