Structural and superconducting properties of thermal treatment-synthesised bulk YBa2Cu3O7-δ superconductor: Effect of addition of SnO2 nanoparticles

Abstract

YBa2Cu3O7-δ (Y-123) bulk superconductors with the addition of (0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1.0 wt.%) SnO2 nanoparticles were synthesised via a thermal treatment method. The influence of SnO2 addition on the superconducting properties by means of critical temperature, Tc, AC susceptibility, phase formation and microstructures, including its elemental composition analysis, were studied. Sharp superconducting transition, ΔTc, and diamagnetic transition were obtained for all SnO2-added samples. It was observed that sample x = 0.4 with a Y-123 phase percentage of 95.8% gives the highest Tc, smallest ΔTc, and the sharpest diamagnetic transition in the normalised susceptibility curves. The microstructure also showed an excess of Sn precipitates on the sample's surface at x = 0.8 and above. As such, the best superconducting properties were observed at x = 0.4 SnO2 addition inside the Y-123 host sample.