Ceramics As A Super Conductor

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

Ceramics as a super conductor.

The high t c field is continually expanding. The ceramic materials used to make superconductors are a class of materials called perovskites. 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. Conductive ceramics advanced industrial materials that owing to modifications in their structure serve as electrical conductors.

The superconductor we will be experimenting with is an yttrium y barium ba and copper cu composition. Chemical formula is yba2cu3o7. This superconductor has a critical transition temperature around 90k well above liquid nitrogen s 77k temperature. Many ceramic superconductors physically behave as superconductors of the second type.

The discovery of high temperature above the temperature of liquid nitrogen ceramic superconductors has changed superconductivity from an interesting curiosity to a useable technology with particular applications in the medical field as a superconducting magnet in mri scanners. In addition to the well known physical properties of ceramic materials hardness compressive strength brittleness there is the property of electric resistivity. Texturing is essential to achieve high current densities in polycrystalline wires or the thick films of ceramic superconductors. However discoveries in the late 20th century have also shown some ceramics to be the most electrically conducting.

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.