Yttrium superconducting

Yttrium—barium—copper oxide, YBa2Cu202 is a newly developed high T material which has been found to be fully superconductive at temperatures above 90 K, a temperature that can be maintained during practical operation. The foremost challenge is to be able to fabricate these materials into a flexible form to prepare wines, fibers, and bulk shapes. Ultrapure powders of yttrium—barium—copper oxide that are sinterable into single-phase superconducting... 

Electrical and Electronic Applications. Silver neodecanoate [62804-19-7] has been used in the preparation of a capacitor-end termination composition (110), lead and stannous neodecanoate have been used in circuit-board fabrication (111), and stannous neodecanoate has been used to form patterned semiconductive tin oxide films (112). The silver salt has also been used in the preparation of ceramic superconductors (113). Neodecanoate salts of barium, copper, yttrium, and europium have been used to prepare superconducting films and patterned thin-fHm superconductors. To prepare these materials, the metal salts are deposited on a substrate, then decomposed by heat to give the thin film (114—116) or by a focused beam (electron, ion, or laser) to give the patterned thin film (117,118). The resulting films exhibit superconductivity above Hquid nitrogen temperatures. 

Ba 4d spectrum also changes by increasing in intensity and conforming mostly to that expected of a barium silicate. As a result of the latter changes the superconducting properties of the film were destroyed. The Y 3d and Cu 2p spectra establish that yttrium and copper oxides are also formed. 

The key to the superconducting properties of these ceramics seems to be the presence of planes of copper and oxygen atoms bonded to one another. The significance of the other atoms in the lattice seems to be to provide a stmctural framework for the copper and oxygen atoms. Thus, in the superconducting compound YBa2Cu30, the substitution of other rare earths for yttrium resrrlts in little change in the properties of the material. 

KimuraY., Ito, T., Yoshikawa, H., Hiraki, A. Superconducting Yttrium Barium, Copper Oxide (YBa2Cu307.delta) particles prepared from freeze-dried nitrates. Jpn. J. Appl. Phy s., Part 2, 30 (5A), L 798 to L 801, 1991... 

Yttrium—barium—copper oxide, 3 343, 369 Yttrium—barium—copper—oxide ceramics superconductivity in, 5 603-605 Yttrium distribution, in mineral sources, 14 637t... 

Assigning oxidation states of —2 to oxygen, + 3 to yttrium and + 2 to barium, one would obtain an oxidation state 7/3 for copper when jc = 0. The non-integer oxidation state of copper is interpreted as if 2/3 of the ions are present as Cu2+ and 1/3 as Cu3 +. This mixed-valent composition seems to be determinant for the occurrence of superconductivity. In fact, as noted in Table 1, all the superconducting ceramic oxides contain Cu in a non-stoichiometric composition. 

The compound consisting of yttrium, copper, and barium oxide, commonly called compound 1-2-3, was formed in 1987 by research scientists at the universities of Alabama and Houston. It had limited superconducting capabilities. It has been known for some time that conductors of electricity such as copper resist, to some extent, the flow of electrons at normal temperatures, but at temperatures near absolute zero (zero Kelvin = -273°C), this resistance to the flow of electrons in some materials is reduced or eliminated. The 1-2-3 compound proved to be superconducting at just 93°K, which is still much too cold to be used for everyday transmission of electricity at normal temperatures. Research continues to explore compounds that may achieve the goal of high-temperature superconductivity. 

After more than ten years of extensive experimental and theoretical studies of the phenomenon of the high Tc superconductivity (HTSC) [1], we still do not know a microscopic mechanism responsible for this phenomenon. Numerous theories of pairing, which lead to high Tc values, are based on models [2-9] and cannot connect a specific chemical composition of HTSC ceramics with the value of the transition temperature Tc. For creating a quantitative theory of the HTSC phenomenon further comparative studies of the electronic structure and their relative properties of SC and non-SC ceramics are needed. In this paper, we confine ourselves to calculations of the electronic structure of the SC yttrium ceramics. 

Various substitution studies (171-173) were conducted in the early stages of research on these new oxide superconductors. One most dramatic result was the facile substitution of other (magnetic) lanthanide ions for yttrium in the VUI-coordinated site of the structure. The incorporation of these magnetic ions had no effect on the superconductivity nor the Tc of the material— quite astounding, since the presence of magnetic ions in superconductors was previously believed to destroy the phenomenon entirely Table 13 presents several examples of such substituted compounds. 

The crystal chemistry of BajRC C has been systematically studied by single-crystal and powder diffraction methods with R = La, Pr,... Yb, in addition to the conventional yttrium compound [(52)(53) (54) and references therein]. With the exception of La, Pr, and Tb, the substitution of Y with rare-earth metals has little or no effect on the superconductivity, with the values of Tc ranging from 87 to 95K. Also, a relatively small change is observed in the cell constants of these compounds. The La, Pr, and Tb-substituted materials are not superconductors. A detailed structural analysis of the Pr case (52) did not show any evidence of a superstructure or the presence of other differences with the atomic configuration of the yttrium prototype. 

Research chemists found that they could modify the conducting properties of solids by doping them, a process commonly used to control the properties of semiconductors (see Section 3.13). In 1986, a record-high Ts of 35 K was observed, surprisingly not for a metal, but for a ceramic material (Section 14.24), a lanthanum-copper oxide doped with barium. Then early in 1987, a new record T, of 93 K was set with yttrium-barium-copper and a series of related oxides. In 1988, two more oxide series of bismuth-strontium-calcium-copper and thallium-barium-calcium-copper exhibited transition temperatures of 110 and 125 K, respectively. These temperatures can be reached by cooling the materials with liquid nitrogen, which costs only about 0.20 per liter. Suddenly, superconducting devices became economically viable. 

Routes to monomeric , mononuclear , monolanthanide alkoxides, enolates, siloxides and aryloxides - an expanded title which will put the scope of the article in a more concrete form. The synthesis of mononuclear alkoxides, in particularly homoleptic derivatives [1], was decisively stimulated by the discovery of high temperature superconducting ceramics based on YBa2Cu307<, where yttrium represents the lanthanide elements [2]. The support of volatile and highly soluble molecular precursors is a prerequisite for synthesizing thin films of these materials by means of MOCVD [3] and sol gel processes [4], respectively. More recently, lanthanide alkoxide reagents became established in... 

In another example of flame synthesis, H2 (or other fuel) and O2 are used for combustion, and droplets of an aqueous salt solution are entrained in one of the streams. In a particular example an aqueous salt solution of yttrium, barium, and copper nitrates was used to create the aerosol entrained in the dry O2 stream of a hydit en-o gen coan-nular diffusion flame with the oxidant as the inner stream. The result was an una lomerated YBa2Cu30 powder witti a critical superconducting temperature of 92 K [5] confirming its high paiily. 

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