Magnetic properties of highTcsuperconducting oxides

Abstract

Abstract This paper summarizes the on-going work in our laboratory on two aspects concerning the magnetic properties of high Tc superconducting oxides. In the first part, the paramagnetic susceptibility results of RBa2Cu3O7−x compounds (where R = Rare earth ion such as Nd, Er, and Dy) were semi-quantitatively analyzed. Crystal field theory together with the recent published results on the neutron inelastic scattering spectroscopy reveal the considerable degree of anisotropy in the susceptibility. Evaluation of the torque shows that the alignment of grains may be achieved at low external fields and that the alignment direction may be predicted by the nature of the rare earth ion. The second aspect reported in this paper deals with the optimization of processing techniques to obtain a high Tc Bismuth oxide-based superconductor. It has been found that heat treatment of Bi2Sr2Ca2Cu2.8O x (2223) for long periods of time provides a material with a reasonably high critical temperature. In a separate set of exper...