Plasticity and strength of metal oxide high-temperature superconductors (Review)

Abstract

The results of research on the plasticity and strength of a wide class of metal oxide perovskite-like compounds which have the property of high-temperature superconductivity or which can be used as base compounds for making high-temperature superconductors (HTSCs) are systematized and presented from a unified point of view. The mechanical properties of materials with different morphology—single crystals, polycrystals, and composites,—measured by different methods of mechanical testing in the low-temperature, room-temperature, and high-temperature regions, are discussed. The characteristic defects of the crystal structure for these compounds are considered, the crystallography of two modes of plastic deformation—slip and twinning—is described, and the stress-induced structural rearrangement of the twin structure that appears at a high-temperature phase transformation is discussed. The features of plastic deformation and fracture of metal oxide materials due to structural microdefects (dislocations, impurities, twin and grain boundaries) and macrodefects (voids, cracks, heterophase inclusions) are noted, and the role of heavy-cation diffusion in the kinetics of high-temperature deformation is discussed. The influence of structural phase transformations and the superconducting transition on the mechanical properties of metal oxides is considered. This review is a continuation of a review of the elastic and acoustic properties of HTSCs published earlier by the authors in Fiz. Nizk. Temp. 21, 475 (1995) [Low Temp. Phys. 21, 367 (1995)].