Noble metals (Ag, Au) nanoparticles addition effects on superconducting properties of CuTl-1223 phase

Abstract

Low anisotropic (Cu 0.5 Tl 0.5 ) Ba 2 Ca 2 Cu 3 O 10 – δ (CuTl-1223) high temperature superconducting phase was synthesized by solid-state reaction, silver (Ag) nanoparticles were prepared by sol-gel method and gold (Au) nanoparticles were extracted from colloidal solution. We added Ag and Au nanoparticles in CuTl-1223 matrix separately with same concentration during the final sintering process to get (M) x /CuTl-1223; M = Ag nanoparticles or Au nanoparticles ( x = 0 and 1.0 wt.%) nano-superconductor composites. We investigated and compared the effects of these noble metals nanoparticles addition on structural, morphological and superconducting transport properties of CuTl-1223 phase. The crystal structure of the host CuTl-1223 superconducting phase was not affected significantly after the addition of these nanoparticles. The enhancement of superconducting properties was observed after the addition of both Ag and Au nanoparticles, which is most probably due to improved inter-grains weak-links and reduction of defects such as oxygen deficiencies, etc. The reduction of normal state room temperature resistivity is the finger prints of the reduction of barriers and facilitation to the carriers transport across the inter-crystallite sites due to improved inter-grains weak-links. The greater improvement of superconducting properties in Ag nanoparticles added samples is attributed to the higher conductivity of silver as compared to gold, which also suits for practical applications due to lower cost and easy synthesis of Ag nanoparticles as compared to Au nanoparticles.