Grain growth kinetics and microstructures of the high Tc GdBa2Cu3O7−δ superconductor

Abstract

Grain growth in the GdBa2Cu3O7−δ high Tc superconductor was investigated. The composition Gd1.09Ba1.91Cu3O7−δ, within the solid solubility region, was selected for the present grain growth study. Differential thermal analysis did not reveal any thermal event except the incongruent melting point, which is indicative of the absence of a liquid second phase during grain growth. The final densities of isothermally annealed samples ranged from 91.3% to 93.7% of theoretical density. The microstructure observation showed a greater grain aspect ratio in this material than in YBa2Cu3O7−δ. The average grain aspect ratio was about 4.7. A very low grain growth exponent of 0.07 was found in the isothermal annealing temperature range from 965 °C to 1020 °C. By comparison with the results on the YBa2Cu3O7−δ system previously reported, it was concluded that the grain growth kinetics in these materials are strongly controlled by the anisotropy of the grain boundary energy. The activation energy of grain growth was calculated to be about 77 kJ/mole.