Senior chief executive officer (CEO)

Geneva, Switzerland

Eventually Boston area, United States

Full time

Objective: building up a start-up company for industrial development of TMC high-field superconductors

Deadline: October 25, 2024

Project Description

Established compagnies for the manufacturing of multifilamentary superconducting wires, so far are not interested in new developments enabling the generation of magnetic fields above the present limits. Their attitude is expected to change by increasing market demand, which will be certainly the case by the introduction of ultra-high field fusion reactors. Such machines require toroidal magnetic fields in the range of 20 T. At present, R&D effort is focused to the application of ReBCO superconducting tapes. Because of the tape geometry, techniques for cabling and magnet winding must be developed from the crash, as well as protection against quench. An additional burden is the high conductor price.

Mainly for the involved risk and the high capital costs, the industrial development of an alternative superconductor, using conventional techniques developed over decades, might be of interest. TMC superconductors were under industrial development before the discovery of ReBCO and may show superior technical performance. With respect to ReBCO, depending on the achievable engineering current density, cost-efficiency may be better up to two orders of magnitude! Further details can be found in https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0162284. 

At the present situation, it is considered as wise to set up a start-up company. The company may be located in Geneva, Switzerland. In this case, collaboration with CERN and the University of Geneva, as well as with scMetrology SARL, is favoured. Another option would be the Boston aera in the US because of various important compagnies involved in superconductivity and near to MIT.

The company should set-up a production line for homogenous TMC bulk material obtained by high temperature synthesis and hot isostatic pressing (HIP). Extrusion and wire drawing at elevated temperatures will be outsourced but must be supervised. Quality control and marketing is an additional duty.

Job Description 

Lead the effort for appropriate funding. Responsibility for the manufacture of high quality TMC bulk material. Lead a team of scientists and engineers related to wire manufacturing, quality control and marketing.

Qualifications

Minimum of a master’s degree in Engineering, Science, Physics or related technical fields.