In this work we present a wide spectrum of ac/dc magnetic and magneto-optical characterizations of Bi₂Sr₂Ca₂Cu₃O_x (BSCCO) tapes and MgB₂ tapes, before and after irradiation by means of high energy ions. The fluences were about 10¹¹ ions/square centimeter. BSCCO tapes were irradiated up to 15% of their thickness by means of 0.25 GeV gold ions (Tandem facility energy ); the penetration depth was evaluated by TRIM simulations. In such tapes there is a decrease of critical temperature of about 0.5 K [1,2,3]; a large sensitivity to the high energy ions is exhibited, showing up in a significant enhancement of critical currents as well as in a large shift of the irreversibility line towards high temperatures (clear signatures of Bose-glass-like transition are present).
MgB₂ tapes were irradiated with 0.25 GeV but the damaging effect was within experimental errors. In order to reach the maximum damaging effect, if present, the gold ions energy was increased up to 4.5 GeV (gold ions, CS-facility energy). TRIM simulations allow to establish that in this case the ions cross about 100% of the sample thickness. No significant changes were found in the useful range of temperatures. Thus MgB₂ bulk exhibits a quite remarkable radiation hardness [4] with respect to high energy ions. The same hardness is exhibited by MgB₂ films under low energy monochromatic protons of 3.5 MeV up to fluences of 10¹⁶ p/cm².
This scenario points towards radiation hardness of MgB₂ as a valuable figure of merit with respect to application of this material in hard ambient.

This work was partially supported by Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy (MaBo project)

[1] E. Mezzetti, L. Gherardi et al., Phys. Rev. B 59, (1999) 3890
[2] L. Gherardi, P. Caracino et al., Mater. Sci. Eng. B 39, (1996) 66
[3] L. Martini, S. Zannella et al., Physica C 261, (1996) 196
[4] G. Ghigo, B. Minetti et al., IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. 13, (2003) 3518

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