Lightweight, highly tough and durable YBa2Cu3O7 -x superconductor

Baoqiang Zhang; Xingyi Zhang; You-He Zhou

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwad030

Lightweight, highly tough and durable YBa₂Cu₃O₇ _-x superconductor

Natl Sci Rev. 2023 Feb 10;10(3):nwad030. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwad030. eCollection 2023 Mar.

Authors

Baoqiang Zhang^{1

2}, Xingyi Zhang^{1

2}, You-He Zhou^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Mechanics on Disaster and Environment in Western China attached to the Ministry of Education of China, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
² Department of Mechanics and Engineering Sciences, College of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.

Abstract

The inherent brittleness and low sustainability of YBa₂Cu₃O₇ _-x (YBCO) bulk superconductor seriously impede its wide applications. It is a great challenge to achieve toughening of this material and maintain its invariable superconductivity at the same time. Here, we fabricate bulk YBCO composite superconductor with a density of 2.15 g cm^-3, which consists of interlocking dual network construction and shows high toughness and durability. The results show that its unit normalized fracture energy at 77 K reaches 638.6 kN m^-2, which is ∼14.8 times that of YBCO bulk prepared by the top-seeded melt textured growth (TSMTG) method. Its critical current shows no degradation during the toughening process. Moreover, after 10 000 cycles, the sample does not fracture with the decay of critical current at 4 K of 14.6% whereas the TSMTG sample fractures only after 25 cycles.

Keywords: YBCO superconductor; durability; interlocking dual network; lightweight; toughness.