We report the fabrication of magnetic metallic contaminant detectors using multiple high-Tc SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) for a lithium-ion battery cathode sheet. Finding ultra-small metallic foreign matter is an important issue for a manufacturer because metallic contaminants carry the risk of an internal short. When contamination occurs, the manufacturer of the product suffers a great loss from recalling the tainted product. Hence, a detection method of small contaminants is required. Preventing such accidents is also an important issue for manufacturers of industrial products. Given the lower detection limit for practical X-ray usage is in the order of 1 mm, a detection system using a SQUID is a more powerful tool for sensitive inspections. We design and set up an eight-channel roll-to-roll high-Tc dc-SQUID inspection system for a lithium ion battery cathode sheet. We report the evaluation results that the detection of a small $arphi $18,-$mu $m steel particle on a lithium-ion battery cathode sheet was successfully done.

There is a possibility that individuals ingest contaminants that have been accidentally mixed with food because processed foods have become very common. Therefore a detection method of small contaminants in food and pharmaceuticals is required. High-Tc SQUID detection systems for metallic contaminants in foods and drugs have been developed for safety purposes. We developed two systems; one large system is for meat blocks and the other small system is for powdered drugs or packaged foods. Both systems consist of SQUID magnetometers, a permanent magnet for magnetization and a belt conveyor. All samples were magnetized before measurements and detected by high Tc SQUIDs. As a result, we successfully detected small syringe needles with a length of 2 mm in a meat block and a stainless steel ball as small as 0.3 mm in diameter.

We are developing an Ultra-Low Field (ULF) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system with a tuned high-Tc (HTS)-rf-SQUID for food inspection. We previously reported that a small hole in a piece of cucumber can be detected. The acquired image was based on filtered back-projection reconstruction using a polarizing permanent magnet. However the resolution of the image was insufficient for food inspection and took a long time to process. The purpose of this study is to improve image quality and shorten processing time. We constructed a specially designed cryostat, which consists of a liquid nitrogen tank for cooling an electromagnetic polarizing coil (135mT) at 77K and a room temperature bore. A Cu pickup coil was installed at the room temperature bore and detected an NMR signal from a sample. The signal was then transferred to an HTS SQUID via an input coil. Following a proper MRI sequence, spatial frequency data at 64×32 points in k-space were obtained. Then, a 2D-FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) method was applied to reconstruct the 2D-MR images. As a result, we successfully obtained a clear water image of the characters “TUT”, which contains a narrowest width of 0.5mm. The imaging time was also shortened by a factor of 10 when compared to the previous system.

A multi-channel high temperature superconducting interference device (high Tc SQUID) system with high magnetic field resolution has been developed. Step edge junctions were employed as weakly coupled Josephson junctions for the SQUID. These junctions worked well and their I-V curves fit the resistively shunted junction (RSJ) model. The SQUID design was investigated to improve magnetic field resolution. The size of the SQUID's center hole was investigated, and we found the optimized size of the hole to be about 25 µm. Meissner effect of superconductor was used in order to concentrate magnetic fluxes. A large washer SQUID and a flux concentrating plate was developed to concentrate magnetic flux to the SQUID center hole. The magnetic field resolution became 370 fT/Hz at 10 Hz and 220 fT/Hz at 10 kHz. This field resolution was enough to detect biomagnetic signals such as magnetocardiac signals. The SQUID was mounted on a special chip carrier and was sealed with epoxy resin for protection from humidity. We have designed and developed a 4-channel and a 16-channel high Tc SQUID system. We used them in a magnetically shielded room to measure magnetic signals of the human heart. We obtained clear multi-channel magnetocardiac signals, which showed clear so called QRS and T wave peaks. A clear isofield contour map of magnetocardiac signals was also obtained. These data indicated that high Tc SQUID is feasible for these biomagnetic applications.

We report on the fabrication of a magnetic metallic contaminant detector using multi-channel high-Tc RF-SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) for large packaged food. For food safety finding small metallic contaminants is an important issue for a food manufacturer. Hence, a detection method for small sized contaminants is required. Some detection systems for food inspection using high-Tc SQUIDs have been reported to date. The system described here is different from the previous systems in its permitted size for inspection, being larger at 150mm in height × 300mm in width. For inspection of large sized food packages, improvement of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) is an important issue because the signal intensity is inversely proportional to the cube of the distance between the SQUID sensor and the object. Therefore a digital filter was introduced and its parameters were optimized. As a result, a steel ball as small as 0.5mm in diameter at a stand-off distance of 167mm was successfully detected with more than SNR = 3.3.

Effect of an addition of a cooled step-up transformer to a flux locked loop (FLL) circuit was studied to reduce indirect rf interference to HTS-dc-SQUID. First, we demonstrated that a noise level of an HTS-dc-SQUID system using the FLL circuit with single room-temperature transformer could be easily degraded by radiation of rf electromagnetic wave to cables in the FLL circuit. It is thought that the rf radiation induced rf current in the circuit, and was transmitted to the SQUID to modulate the bias current, resulting in the increase of the noise level. To avoid the degradation due to such indirect rf interference, the cooled set-up transformer was added to the FLL circuit since it was expected that the additional transformer would work as a "step-down" transformer against the induced rf current. It was shown that the noise level of a HTS-SQUID system (SQUITEM system) operated in an electromagnetically unshielded environment could be improved to the same level as that measured in a magnetically shielded room by the additional cooled transformer and appropriate impedance matching.

This study shows that using the direct offset integration technique (DOIT) and additional positive feedback (APF) in a high-Tc dc superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) improves the effective flux-to-voltage transfer function and reduces the flux noise of a magnetometer, thus improving the magnetic field noise. The effective flux-to-voltage transfer function and the flux noise with APF were measured at different values of the positive feedback parameter βa, which depends on the resistance of the APF circuit. These quantities were also compared between conditions with and without APF. This investigation showed that a βa condition the most suitable for minimizing the flux noise of a magnetometer with APF exists and that it is βa=0.77. The effective flux-to-voltage transfer function with APF is about three times what it is without APF (93 µV/Φ0 vs. 32 µV/Φ0). The magnetic field noise of a magnetometer with APF is improved by a factor of about 3 (242 fT/Hz vs. 738 fT/Hz).

Lymph-node detection system using a high Tc SQUID and ultra-small particles was proposed. Pseudo lymph nodes containing small iron particles were made and the magnetic signal was measured. The SQUID signal was proportional to the weight of the iron in the fluid. At the distance of 20 mm, the detectable minimum weight of the iron was 40 µg. We demonstrated that the possibility of the application of the system to the human body.

A portable cryo-system using a high-Tc SQUID for the measurement of the remanant magnetic field of a rock specimen was designed and fabricated. The sensing surface of the SQUID faces upward in our system, although the system for bio-magnetics faces down. The SQUID is cooled by liquid nitrogen via a sapphire heat transfer rod. The total heat transfer of the system was measured by means of a boiling-off method and was found to be 1.65 W. It was demonstrated that the system can be operated for more than 17 hours without any maintenance such as filling with liquid nitrogen. The system was applied to the measurement of the remanent magnetic field distributions of rock samples cored from deep underground. We have successfully measured the distributions.

High-Tc superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) is an ultra-sensitive magnetic sensor. After the discovery of the high-Tc superconducting materials, the performance of the high-Tc SQUID has been improved and stabilized. One strong candidate for application is a detection system of magnetic foreign matters in industrial products. There is a possibility that ultra-small metallic foreign matter has been accidentally mixed with industrial products such as lithium ion batteries. If this happens, the manufacturer of the product suffers a great loss recalling products. The outer dimension of metallic particles less than 100 micron cannot be detected using X-ray imaging, which is commonly used for the inspection. Therefore a highly sensitive system for small foreign matters is required. We developed detection systems based on high-Tc SQUID for industrial products. We could successfully detect small iron particles of less than 50 micron on a belt conveyer. These detection levels were hard to be achieved using conventional X-ray detection or other methods.