Field Mapping and Automated Shimming of an HTS Magnet by "Internal" Active Shim Coils Located in the Bore of the Magnet

Abstract

In order to obtain the target field homogeneity of a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) magnet, commonly used are active shim coils, i. e., axial and radial, that typically locate radially outside of the magnet. In a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet, however, we reported a "strong" hysteresis in the field-to-current ratio of an external (placed radially outside the HTS magnet) active shim coil by the screening-current-induced fields (SCFs). This nonlinear behavior of an external active shim due to the SCF is one of the major technical challenges to achieve the target field homogeneity of an HTS NMR or MRI magnet. In this paper, we constructed and operated active shim coils, i. e., two axial (Z1 and Z2) and two radial (X and Y), that were installed inside of an HTS magnet to investigate effectiveness of internal shim coils. The HTS magnet, wound with GdBCO coated conductors, consists of ten double pancakes. With the active shim coils, a customized field mapping and shimming system was constructed, which consists of a 3-D field mapper, a field analysis software package, and a set of power supplies to control the shim coils. A pre-shim field error of 953 ppm at a 10-mm-diameter cylinder was improved to 464 ppm after iterative automated shimming using the internal shim coils. The results demonstrate that the internal shim coils are effective to eliminate the SCF-oriented field errors, both radial and axial, which was practically impossible for the external shim coils.