The effect of cooling rate on critical current density and microstructure of single grain bulk YBa2Cu3Oy superconductors grown by IG process

Abstract

In the recent years, top-seeded infiltration-growth (TS-IG) process of YBa2Cu3Oy (YBCO) had shown crucial and promising strengths as compared to melt growth process. The IG process lucidly clarified that a supply of liquid phase is more than essential for further growing large grains. Further, this experimentation aimed to enhance the performance of bulk YBCO superconducting materials, which were processed by IG process. The homemade Yb-123 and Y-211 were utilized in order to produce YBa2Cu3Oy samples with the means of Yb-123+liquid (1:1) as a liquid source under a varied cooling rate. Moreover, single grain YBCO bulks were fabricated employing TS-IG process consisted of numerous varied cooling rates of 0.16 °C/h, 0.25 °C/h and 0.5 °C/h, respectively. In essence, all samples were oxygenated for 100 h with a constant pressure of 300 mL/min. Therefore, all samples’ texture was determined by means of X-ray diffraction measurements. Microstructure analysis was performed by scanning electron microscopy for correlation of critical current density of TS-IG processed single grain YBCO bulks.