JOURNAL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE-MATERIALS IN ELECTRONICS, vol.30, no.9, pp.8805-8813, 2019 (SCI-Expanded)
We study in this work the influence of titanium oxide (TiO2) nano-wires (NWs) and nano-particles (NPs) addition on the flux trapping potential of YBa2Cu3Oy (YBCO for brevity). Samples were characterized using various techniques, including X-rays diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, temperature dependence of resistivity under magnetic field and magnetization measurements. Three kinds of YBCO+x TiO2 samples with x=0.0 and 0.1 wt% were synthetized via the solid-state reaction route. The activation energy U-0, the coherence length (0), the upper critical field H-c2(0) and irreversibly field H-irr are estimated and discussed in the relation to TiO2 addition effect. The derived parameters are increased for samples containing 0.1 wt% of TiO2 nano-entities and are more enhanced in Y-Ti NPs sample. It results therefore, that suitable amount of TiO2 nano-particles addition can be useful tool for the manufacture of a promising YBCO compound for practical applications.