title: Effect of Al and Ca co-doping, in the presence of Te, in superconducting YBCO whiskers growth.
abstract: High-Tcsuperconducting cuprates (HTSC) such as YBa2Cu3O7 - x(YBCO) are promising candidates for solid-state THz applications based on stacks of intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJs) with atomic thickness. In view of future exploitation of IJJs, high-quality superconducting YBCO tape-like single crystals (whiskers) have been synthesized from Ca-Al-doped precursors in the presence of Te. The main aim of this paper is to determine the importance of the simultaneous use of Al, Te and Ca in promoting YBCO whiskers growth with good superconducting properties (Tc= 79-84 K). Further, single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SC-XRD) refinements of tetragonal YBCO whiskers (P4/mmm) are reported to fill the literature lack of YBCO structure investigations. All the as-grown whiskers have also been investigated by means of X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Our results demonstrate that the interplay of Ca, Te and Al elements is clearly necessary in order to obtain superconducting YBCO whiskers. The data obtained from SC-XRD analyses confirm the highly crystalline nature of the whiskers grown. Ca and Al enter the structure by replacing the Y and the octahedral coordinated Cu1 site, respectively, as in other similar orthorhombic compounds, while Te does not enter the structure of whiskers but its presence in the precursor is essential to the growth of the crystals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and CrisDi Interdepartmental Center for Crystallography, University of Torino, via P. Giuria 7, Torino I-10125, Italy.
authors.forename: Lise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pascale
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Torino, via P. Giuria 1, Torino I-10125, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Truccato
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and CrisDi Interdepartmental Center for Crystallography, University of Torino, via P. Giuria 7, Torino I-10125, Italy.
authors.forename: Lorenza
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Operti
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and CrisDi Interdepartmental Center for Crystallography, University of Torino, via P. Giuria 7, Torino I-10125, Italy.
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Agostino
keywords: chemical doping; high-Tc superconductors; intrinsic Josephson junctions; single-crystal X-ray diffraction