Structural and magnetic properties of YBa2Cu3O7/BaZrO3 composites

Abstract

We reported a study of the structural and magnetic properties of BaZrO 3 (BZO) as possible substrate material for the production of YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7-δ (YBCO) superconducting films. Rietveld analyses of the X-ray diffraction pattern show that BZO crystalizes as a cubic perovskite, space group Pm3m (#221). Chemical stability and crystallographic coupling between BZO and YBCO were examined by characterizing YBCO/BZO (10, 30 and 50 YBCO vol%) polycrystalline composites. Morphological and compositional analyses of composites were performed through scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray experiments, respectively. Response of magnetization measurements revealed that the proximity of BZO does not affect the superconducting transition temperature (T c =90,2 K) of YBCO material. Our results evidenced that the BZO is an excellent candidate to be substrate for the fabrication of YBCO superconducting thin films.

Enhancing magnetic pinning by BaZrO3nanorods forming coherent interface by strain-directed Ca-doping in YBa2Cu3O7−xnanocomposite films

“…However, differences on the microstructures of the YBCO matrix of the 2% BZO-YBCO SL and ML samples have been revealed in the HRSTEM images. In the BZO-YBCO SL sample, as shown in figures 2(b) and (c), a large concentration of dislocations and YBCO lattice distortion initiated from the BZO/YBCO interface are present, which is consistent with the previous reports [5, 27,30,43,44] and can be ascribed to the large lattice mismatch of 7.7% between the BZO and YBCO [45][46][47]. In contrast, based on the Cs-corrected midmag STEM image of the BZO-YBCO ML film shown in figure 2(e), such dislocations and lattice distortion are almost negligible and the BZO/YBCO interface looks highly coherent.…”