Ceramics As A Super Conductor

The ceramic materials used to make superconductors are a class of materials called perovskites.

Ceramics as a super conductor.

The superconductor we will be experimenting with is an yttrium y barium ba and copper cu composition. The first high temperature superconductor was discovered in 1986 by ibm researchers bednorz and müller 3 6 who were awarded the nobel prize in physics in 1987 for their important break through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials. Texturing is essential to achieve high current densities in polycrystalline wires or the thick films of ceramic superconductors. Conductive ceramics advanced industrial materials that owing to modifications in their structure serve as electrical conductors.

Ceramics are amongst the most electrically insulating materials known. This superconductor has a critical transition temperature around 90k well above liquid nitrogen s 77k temperature. In addition to the well known physical properties of ceramic materials hardness compressive strength brittleness there is the property of electric resistivity. However discoveries in the late 20th century have also shown some ceramics to be the most electrically conducting.

Many ceramic superconductors physically behave as superconductors of the second type. Yba 2 cu 3 o 7 x was the first ceramic superconductor discovered with t c greater than liquid nitrogen temperature. The best ceramic conductors are the so called high tc superconductors materials that lose their resistance at much higher critical temperatures than their metal alloy counterparts. The high t c field is continually expanding.

Most high tc ceramics are layered structures with two dimensional copper oxygen sheets along which superconduction takes place.