Metal oxides, high temperature superconductors

The electronic theory of metallic superconduction was established by Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer in 1957, but the basis of superconduction in the oxides remains a battleground for rival interpretations. The technology of the oxide ( high-temperature ) superconductors is currently receiving a great deal of attention the central problem is to make windable wires or tapes from an intensely brittle material. It is in no way a negative judgment on the importance and interest of these materials that they do not receive a detailed discussion here it is simply that they do not lend themselves to a superficial account, and there is no space here for a discussion in the detail that they intrinsically deserve. 

In case of conventional metallic superconductors, the materials usually have any pinning force effective up to the held close to Hd and hence the magnetization curve is irreversible almost up to Hd- However, in case of oxide high-temperature superconductors, the hysteresis becomes almost zero far below Hd- The magnetic held that separates reversible and irreversible region... 

The alkoxides and aryloxides, particularly of yttrium have excited recent interest. This is because of their potential use in the production of electronic and ceramic materials,in particular high temperature superconductors, by the deposition of pure oxides (metallo-organic chemical vapour deposition, MOCVD). They are moisture sensitive but mostly polymeric and involatile and so attempts have been made to inhibit polymerization and produce the required volatility by using bulky alkoxide ligands. M(OR)3, R = 2,6-di-terr-butyl-4-methylphenoxide, are indeed 3-coordinate (pyramidal) monomers but still not sufficiently volatile. More success has been achieved with fluorinated alkoxides, prepared by reacting the parent alcohols with the metal tris-(bis-trimethylsilylamides) ... 

Among the high-temperature superconductors one finds various cuprates (i.e., ternary oxides of copper and barium) having a layered structure of the perovskite type, as well as more complicated oxides on the basis of copper oxide which also include oxides of yttrium, calcium, strontium, bismuth, thallium, and/or other metals. Today, all these oxide systems are studied closely by a variety of specialists, including physicists, chemists, physical chemists, and theoreticians attempting to elucidate the essence of this phenomenon. Studies of electrochemical aspects contribute markedly to progress in HTSCs. 

Electrodeposition was used to prepare a biaxially textured Gd2Zr207 (GZO) buffer layer on Ni-W substrates.129 Buffer layers provide chemically inert, continuous, and smooth bases for the growth of the superconductor oxide films. They also prevent both the diffusion of metal to the high-temperature superconductor (HTS) layer and the oxidation of the metal substrate when superconductor oxide films are processed at high temperature (-800 °C) in an oxygen atmosphere (100ppm or more). 

The important and widely studied copper-oxide-derived high-temperature superconductors, known as cuprate superconductors, are basically insulators. Doping converts these into metallic materials, many of which are superconductors over rather more restricted composition ranges. Several of these materials have already been discussed La2Cu04 and Sr2Cu02F2 (Section 4.3.3), La2 A.SrxCu04 (Section 8.5.1), and Nd2, Ce,Cu04 (Section 8.5.2). 

Bond valence sum (BVS) analysis, developed by Brown (43) to calculate metal oxidation states in materials such as high-temperature superconductors and zeolites, has recently been shown by Thorp (44) to be predictive for metalloenzymes and model compounds. On the basis of crystallographic data, the empirical parameters r0 and B are determined. These values can then be used to calculate oxidation states from known coordination environments or coordination numbers from known oxidation states and bond lengths. The requisite equations are... 

A superconductor is a material which conducts electricity without resistance and the exclusion of the interior magnetic field (Meissner effect) below a certain critical temperature Tc- Superconductivity occurs in a wide variety of materials, including elements, various metallic alloys and some heavily-doped semiconductors. Mixed metal oxides belong to the class of high-temperature superconductors (Tq > 30 K). 

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