High-Tc Cuprate Superconductors: Materials, Structures and Properties

Abstract

The cuprate superconductors are the first and the most important high-Tc superconducting materials, as still today applications of superconductivity at the temperature of liquid nitrogen (77 K) are only possible with cuprate superconductors (and here, especially the three compositions YBa2Cu3O7−δ (abbreviated as Y-123 or YBCO), Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ (Bi-2212) and Bi2Sr2Ca2Cu2O10+δ (Bi-2223)). In this chapter, we present the crystal structures of the main 5 HTSc cuprate families (Ln-Cu–O (Ln-214), Y-Ba-Cu–O (YBCO), Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu–O (BSCCO), Tl-Ba-Ca-Cu–O (TlBCCO), and Hg-Ba-Ca-Cu–O (HgBCCO)) and their specific crystallographic features and discuss the resulting superconducting properties and the electric and magnetic characteristics being important for the applications, including the normal state properties, the grain boundary problem, the irreversibility lines, and issues of creating flux pinning sites to increase the critical current density, jc. We further point out the progress in the material development in the direction for applications concerning the microstructure and texture and present the typical sample shapes.KeywordsHigh-Tc superconductorsCupratesCrystal structuresPhase diagramDopingOxygen contentIrreversibility linesMicrostructureApplications