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The Atomic-Scale Origins of Grain Boundary Superconducting Properties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

S. J. Pennycook ,
J. Buban ,
C. Prouteau ,
M. F. Chisholm ,
P. D. Nellist  and
N. D. Browning
S. J. Pennycook
Affiliation:
Solid State Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN37831-6030
J. Buban
Affiliation:
Dept. Physics (M/C 273), University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL60607
C. Prouteau
Affiliation:
Solid State Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN37831-6030 Dept. Physics (M/C 273), University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL60607
M. F. Chisholm
Affiliation:
Solid State Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN37831-6030
P. D. Nellist
Affiliation:
Cavendish Laboratory, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HE.
N. D. Browning
Affiliation:
Dept. Physics (M/C 273), University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL60607
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Extract

Due to the extemely short coherence lengths of the high-Tc superconductors (around 30 Å in the a-b plane), defects such as grain boundaries are obvious barriers to the flow of supercurrent. Within a few months of the discovery of these materials, it was shown how the critical current dropped four orders of magnitude as the grain boundary misorientaion increased from zero to 45°. Even today, there is no quantitative understanding of this behavior. A qualitative understanding is however possible through atomic resolution Z-contrast imaging on YBa2cu3O7-δ and SrTiO3 bicrystal grain boundaries, combined with bond-valence-sum analysis.

The Z-contrast image of a YBa2cu3O7-δ low angle grain boundary in Fig. 1 shows the same kind of reconstructed dislocation cores as seen in SrTiO3, containing reconstructions on both the Cu and Y/Ba sublattices.

Type
Microscopy of Semiconducting and Superconducting Materials
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 4 , Issue S2: Proceedings: Microscopy & Microanalysis '98, Microscopy Society of America 56th Annual Meeting, Microbeam Analysis Society 32nd Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia July 12-16, 1998 , July 1998 , pp. 688 - 689
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America

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References

References:

1.Dimos, D., Chaudhari, P., Mannhart, J. and LeGoues, F. K., Phys Rev Lett 61 (1988) 1653CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Browning, N. D., Buban, J. P., Nellist, P. D., Norton, D. P., Chisholm, M. F., and Pennycook, S. J., Physica C, 295 (1998) Jan 20 issueGoogle Scholar
3. C. Prouteau et al, these proceedings This research was sponsored by the Division of Materials Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC05-96OR22464 with Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corp., by NSF under grant no. DMR-9503877, and by an appointment to the ORNL postdoctoral research program administered jointly by ORNL and ORISE.Google Scholar