FOREWORD

The ninth International Workshop on Coated Conductors for Applications (CCA08) was held in early December 2008 at the University of Houston.  There, Paul Chu and his colleagues were first to report in 1987 the transition to superconductivity above 77K in the cuprate compound YBa₂Cu₃O_7-δ (YBCO).  This material and the related REBCO compounds (RE = Rare Earth) are currently essential for manufacturing the 2^nd generation of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tapes, the Coated Conductors (CC).  

The remarkable progress achieved in development and processing of these conductors brings within reach applications in electrical power engineering and high-field magnets, which can pave the way to implementation of energy-saving and ecologically beneficial devices and systems. CCA08 was organized as a topical workshop and provided a forum and an open atmosphere for intense discussions addressing the foremost question: What can we do for making coated conductors ready for applications?

The program of CCA08 reflected this intention by addressing these specific questions:

• What are the needs of specific applications?
• What has to be done to achieve enhanced performance of coated conductors meeting specifications of each particular application?  
• Which processing technologies are at hand or need to be developed to manufacture high-performance and low-cost 2^nd generation HTS conductors?

Final round table discussions summarized the present achievements, identified bottlenecks, and pointed out novel directions and visions.

The full schedule of CCA08 can be found under www.cca08.com, where also some of the contributions to the workshop are included as PDF files of the PowerPoint presentations. To facilitate quick dissemination of the presented results, the organizers secured the consent of CCA08 contributors to publish the submitted 2-page Extended Abstracts in this Forum issue. The CCA08 list of contents follows the schedule of the workshop.  The included contributions were not peer reviewed.

Herbert Freyhardt and Kamel Salama, CCA08 Co-Chairs

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