Thermal Conductivity of Single-Crystal and Sintered RBa2Cu3O7 at low Temperatures

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe thermal conductivity k of micro-twinned single crystals of YBa2Cu3O7 and HoBa2Cu3O7 and a sintered sample of YBa2Cu3O7 has been measured for temperatures 0.03<T<5K. For the single crystals, k is small and varies as T1.8-1.9 This behavior resembles k for glassy insulators except for the lack of a plateau above IK. It is concluded that the thermal carriers are phonons with their mean free path limited by resonant scattering from tunneling entities, as in glasses. Suggestions for the location of tunneling systems are given. For the sinter, k is still smaller but does not follow a power law T-dependence. It is similar to other sintered ceramics with the same particle size, where the phonon mean free path is dominated by Rayleigh scattering from the particles. This strong scattering from the microstructure presumably masks the scattering from TS within each particle.