Masaki Suenaga, a retired metallurgist who remains an active researcher at
the U.S. Department of Energy’s
Brookhaven National Laboratory, has received the IEEE Council on Superconductivity
Award for significant and sustained contributions to applied superconductivity.
Originally referred to as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
Inc., the nonprofit IEEE is the world’s leading professional association
for the advancement of technology. Suenaga received a plaque and $5,000 at the
recent Applied Superconductivity Conference in Chicago.
“I am gratified that my peers appreciate my work,” Suenaga said.
“I feel fortunate that I’ve been able to do work that I like and
that my research has resulted in useful technologies.”
Superconductivity refers to the lack of resistance to the flow of direct electric
current by certain materials at very low temperatures. Suenaga has spent much
of his early career studying the superconductor niobium-tin, and his research
resulted in a process to make the first industrial niobium-tin superconducting
wire for use in high-field magnets, such as those used in particle accelerators
and fusion reactors. His work also led to the production of a flat niobium-tin
tape with low losses of alternating electric current (AC), which made possible
Brookhaven Lab’s Power Transmission Project, a program that began in the
1970s to develop a viable and cost-effective means of transmitting large amounts
of electrical power underground. This project laid the groundwork for the Long
Island Power Authority installing the world’s first high-temperature superconductor
power transmission cable system in Holbrook, Long Island, earlier this year.
The new cable uses far less wire and yet conducts up to five times more power
in a smaller right-of-way than traditional copper-based cables.
Materials become superconducting at different temperatures, and, as a part
of his research, Suenaga used a powerful electron microscope at Brookhaven to
view the microstructure of both low- (minus 430 degrees Fahrenheit) and high-
(minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature superconductors, to see how they
are formed and how they grow under varied conditions in order to improve their
properties. Suenaga and colleagues, for example, found that substituting small
amounts of titanium for niobium in the niobium-tin superconductor enables it
to carry a higher current at higher magnetic fields, which are needed in large
superconducting magnets. Suenaga also determined that AC losses could be minimized
by modifying the surface of niobium-tin tapes in commercial production, a finding
that made the Brookhaven Lab transmission cable possible.
Suenaga earned a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1962 and a Ph.D. in metallurgy
in 1969, both from the University of California at Berkeley. He joined Brookhaven
Lab in 1969 as an assistant metallurgist and worked his way through the ranks
to become a senior metallurgist in 1983. He was honored with Brookhaven Lab’s
Distinguished Research & Development Award in 1992, and he became a Fellow
of the American Physical Society in 2002. Suenaga retired in 2006, but he still
works at the Laboratory on a part-time basis as a guest scientist. He is also
an adjunct professor of materials science at Stony Brook University.