Effects of pre-carbonization treatment on the sintering process and Jc performance of sugar-doped MgB2 superconductors

The carbonization treatment was employed to the sugar-coated B powders before it mixed with Mg powders. It is found that the pre-carbonization treatment could effectively suppress the formation of MgO and Mg2C3 impurity in the sugar-doped samples and thus result in an improved Jc at low fields in the sugar-doped samples. Besides, the sintering process of sugar-doped samples was also investigated combined with the thermal analysis and it is found that the sugar addition could obviously lower the onset temperature of the solid–solid reaction between Mg and B.