Steady high magnetic field is a very important tool for frontier researches. Many advanced countries have developed high field magnet technologies and built high magnetic field facilities to create research conditions. The applications of high magnetic field on scientific researches have promoted the development of many disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, material science, bioscience，etc. There are three kinds of steady magnets, namely water-cooled magnets, superconducting magnets and hybrid magnets. Water-cooled magnets can create very high magnetic field rapidly, but with large power consumption. Superconducting magnets have much lower power consumption and the volume and weight of the magnets are much smaller. However, the maximum field of current superconducting magnets is not as high as that of the water-cooled magnets. Hybrid magnets use superconducting coils to replace the outer coils of a water-cooled magnet. So they can create a higher field with lower power consumption compared to water-cooled magnets. This paper briefly introduces the above magnet technologies, reviews their development history and discusses their development perspectives.

high magnetic field  /  resistive magnets  /  superconducting magnets  /  hybrid magnets