Francesco Lonardo received the Best Student Award at the MT-28 conference

Francesco Lonardo, PhD student in the group of Applied Superconductivity, UNIGE, was one of the recipients of the Best Student Award at the 28^th International Magnet Technology Conference (MT-28). The work of Francesco on the “Influence of the heat treatment on the layer-J_C of internal-Sn Nb₃Sn wires with internally oxide nanoparticles” was selected as one of the three best student contributions on accelerator magnet technologies at the MT28 conference.

Francesco’s work has a direct relevance to the Future Circular Collider project at CERN, which is poised to be both a promising application and a formidable challenge for Nb₃Sn superconductors. The goal of a 100 TeV proton-proton collider set by the high-energy physics community has led to a baseline configuration requiring dipoles generating 16 T in a 100 km tunnel. This demand imposes performance requirements that exceed the capabilities of commercial Nb₃Sn wires currently available. The research of Francesco aims to develop methods to bring the performance of Nb₃Sn at its ultimate limit that are also scalable for industrial production.