Improvement in Fabrication of Hg-1223 Superconductor by Te-Doping

Abstract

The sealed quartz tube method is one of the usual methods used for sintering mercury-based copper oxide superconductors. By this method, precursor pellets are inserted into the quartz tube together with certain mass ratio to the reagent sample pellets for controlling the mercury vapour pressure. A certain amount of excess HgO is required to ensure the fabricated sample to have the desired composition. In our research, it was found that if a small amount of TeO 2 is added and mixed with the pulverized precursor after first calcination, Hg-1223 superconductors can be fabricated without using the precursor pellet and no excess HgO is required. Thus, the fabrication process can be simplified. As mercury and its oxide are toxic, if no excess Hg is involved, it is safe and good for the laboratory-environment. In this research, some amounts of 0.10 and 0.18 wt% (weigh percentage) of TeO 2 were added into the precursor, it is shown that the critical temperature of the fabricated samples is comparable to that of the undoped Hg-1223 samples. For 0.10 wt% of TeO2, the T c of the as-synthesized sample is about 116.7 K whereas the annealed Te-doped Hg-1223 is about 134.2 K. For 0.18 wt% of TeO 2 , the T c of the assynthesized and annealed samples are 115.8 K and 134.6 K, respectively. The phase structure of samples fabricated in this research has been analyzed by the X-ray diffraction technique. It shows that the Hg-1223 phase is dominated.