Enhanced flux pinning in YBCO multilayer films with BCO nanodots and segmented BZO nanorods

• Published in: Scientific reports 2017-10, Vol.7 (1), p.14682-8, Article 14682
• Main Authors: Malmivirta, Mika, Rijckaert, Hannes, Paasonen, Ville, Huhtinen, Hannu, Hynninen, Teemu, Jha, Rajveer, Awana, Veerpal Singh, Van Driessche, Isabel, Paturi, Petriina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 639/301/119/1003; 639/705/1042; 639/925/357/537; High temperature; High temperature superconductors; Humanities and Social Sciences; Molecular dynamics; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13758-6

The flux pinning properties of the high temperature superconductor YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7− δ (YBCO) have been conventionally improved by creating both columnar and dot-like pinning centres into the YBCO matrix. To study the effects of differently doped multilayer structures on pinning, several samples consisting of a multiple number of individually BaZrO 3 (BZO) and BaCeO 3 (BCO) doped YBCO layers were fabricated. In the YBCO matrix, BZO forms columnar and BCO dot-like defects. The multilayer structure improves pinning capability throughout the whole angular range, giving rise to a high critical current density, J c . However, the BZO doped monolayer reference still has the most isotropic J c . Even though BZO forms nanorods, in this work the samples with multiple thin layers do not exhibit a c axis peak in the angular dependence of J c . The angular dependencies and the approximately correct magnitude of J c were also verified using a molecular dynamics simulation.