The influence of magnetic nano metal oxides doping on structure and electrical properties of YBCO superconductor

Abstract

Superconductor samples of YBa2Cu3O7−δ (YBCO) + x where x = 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 wt% of nano metal oxides namely Cr2O3, Co3O4 and Mn3O4 namely are synthesized by the solid-state reaction route. Both x-ray diffraction and electron microscopy have been employed to study the phase identification and the microstructure of these samples. Transition temperature of the samples has been determined by four probe resistivity measurements. The x-ray diffraction patterns indicate that the gross structure of YBCO does not change with the substitution of three types of nano metal oxides with different doping level. The critical transition temperature (Tc) is found to decrease with the increases of doping level. Mn3O4 has highest Tc value which may be due to flux pinning from some defects and the rapid suppression in Tc with increasing concentration of Mn3O4 may be due to the cooper pair breaking and the hole filling in the CuO2 planes.