Daniel Chavez's work has applications in the medical field, such as the reduction of magnetic resonance costs.

Guanajuato, Gto., November 13, 2018.- With an alternative to the Rutherford cable, which is traditionally used in science, Daniel Chavez, PhD student in physics at Campus León of the University of Guanajuato (UG) presented a project for the development of superconducting cables, which It allows improvements in the design of superconducting magnets, with which it obtained first place in the Applied Superconductivity Conference (ASC) 2018, the most important in its area worldwide.

Daniel Chavez's work was selected from among 135 participants, and due to the quality of his paper (short scientific article) had the opportunity to expose his research orally, which is part of his master's thesis that deals with the development of Superconductor cables, a little studied subject in Mexico.

In this regard, Daniel Chavez explained that the subject of his thesis was to make an alternative to the Rutherford cable, which is called cable in conduit, this potentiates the possibilities in the design of magnets, because – unlike Rutherford-can be folded in any direction, maintains the superconductor's thermal stability and has no current degradation, as with other designs it loses up to 40 percent of the driving capacity.

The PhD student in physics currently holds a stay at the University of Texas A&M, where he was advised by Dr. Peter McIntyre, a renowned international researcher in the area of superconductors. About the immediate applications of the project, he said it will be used to build the superconducting magnets that will be used in the future electron-ion collider of the Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory. Another of the many applications are on the medical side, even Dr. McIntyre is working on an MRI design to detect early-stage breast cancer, he revealed.

The lead cable developed by Daniel Chavez opens the possibilities to treatments such as proton therapy against cancer, which in Mexico is almost non-existent. This type of magnets allows to considerably reduce the cost of this technology. To exemplify, he noted that in laboratory projections this type of technology costs 100 million dollars, but with the use of cable in conduit is reduced to 20 million dollars. The same applies to magnetic resonance imaging, whose costs could be reduced for patients because it would reduce exposure time and therefore the use of equipment.

To develop his research, Daniel Chavez also has the advice of Dr. Mauro Napsuciale Mendivil, professor of the Department of Physics and Director of support for research and postgraduate in UG, who prompted him to make an academic stay in the prestigious Texas A&M university.

Delving into his project, the UG pupil said that the technology he possesses is not new, it is known since the decade of the 70 but other designs have had problems to work, including the degradation of current and bending angles.

The design developed by Daniel Chavez has already been patented, and among its advantages is the size of the bending angles and that has achieved zero degradation of the current during the manufacturing process. In addition, the cable in conduit can be used in low and high temperature superconductors, so it offers a wide range of possibilities.

"I got the project from an idea, developed a manufacturing process, a quality control process to check that it wasn't damaging the superconductor in the process, a winding strategy, the large scale production process, and now we know how to produce large quantities; geometry is the interesting thing, it is very specific for each application, it is something that no one had done and can be used in different superconductors," he explained.

On his stay at the university Texas A&M he shared that the challenges and the pace of work are very different, very demanding, "you must work hard and do things for yourself, that changes you... I like it very much, I enjoy it, I like to make designs because I explore my ideas."

He added that he has had the opportunity to form in different institutions, and that has allowed him to verify the academic quality of the University of Guanajuato, specifically on the Department of Physics, emphasized the level of the researchers, who besides being very good teachers, they are always renewing and updating.

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