Effects of Forming Pressure on Physicochemical Properties of YBCO Ceramics

This article details the solid-state synthesis of high-temperature superconducting YBa₂Cu₃O_7?x. Tests were carried out on samples formed at different pressures (200, 400, 600 and 800 MPa) before being annealed under pure oxygen. The X-ray diffraction method showed that, regardless of the forming pressure, the samples contain about 97 wt.% of Y-123 phase. SEM images showed a polycrystalline structure of samples of similar grain size and number of pores (intergranular spaces). The values of critical temperatures (T_c0), determined from magnetoresistance measurements, are about 91.5 K for all samples, and the T_c0 temperatures do not depend on sample-forming pressure. Magnetoresistance measurements have shown that samples formed with higher pressures exhibit smaller changes in T_c0 and superconducting transition width ΔT due to the influence of the H_DC magnetic field, than the samples formed with lower pressures. Values of specific resistance determined by the use of van der Pauw method at 300 K is about 2 mΩcm for all samples. The critical temperatures (T cintra) of grains and critical current densities at 77 K were determined from AC magnetic susceptibility measurements, and they are about 91.6 K and 400 A cm^?2, respectively.