Effects of electron irradiation on superconducting properties of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8/MgO superconductor composite

Among the challenges for superconducting devices to be applied in industry are the need for high transport critical current density (Jr) and sustainability of the device in different environment. For superconducting material to maintain high 4, effective flux pinning centers are needed. The addition of small size MgO particles in bulk Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 (Bi-2212) superconductor has been proven to enhance the effective flux pinning centers in the superconducting material. Nevertheless, the flux pinning properties of the superconducting materials may change if they are exposed to radioactive environment. Electron irradiation is one of the common techniques that can be used to study the impact of irradiation on superconducting materials. In this work, a small amount of nanosize MgO particles were used as the flux pinning centers for Bi-2212 superconducting material. The Bi-2212/MgO composite was heat treated and followed by partial melting and slow cooling. Some of the samples were subjected to electron irradiation using the facility at the Malaysian Nuclear Agency. Characterizations of non-irradiated and irradiated samples were performed via X-ray Diffraction Patterns (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and measurements of J, dependence on temperature in self-field. Higher J, indicates better flux pinning properties in irradiated superconductor composite. This is achieved if defects with larger radius with dimension comparable to the coherence length of the superconducting material were created. On the other hand, decreased in Je indicates ineffective flux pinning and this is attributed to the overlapping of defects that break the superconducting region. Our study showed that electron irradiation deteriorated the flux pinning properties of the Bi-2212/MgO superconductor composite