Recrystallization of high temperature superconductors

Currently one of the most widely used high {Tc} superconductors is the Bi-based compounds Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}CaCu{sub 2}O{sub z} and Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}Ca{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub z} (known as BSCCO 2212 and 2223 compounds) with {Tc} values of about 85 K and 110 K respectively. Lengths of high performance conductors ranging from 100 to 1000 m long are routinely fabricated and some test magnets have been wound. An additional difficulty here is that although Bi-2212 and Bi-2223 phases exist over a wide range of stoichiometries, neither has been prepared in phase-pure form. So far the most successful method of constructing reliable and robust wires or tapes is the so called powder-in-tube (PIT) technique [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] in which oxide powder of the appropriate stoichiometry and phase content is placed inside a metal tube, deformed into the desired geometry (round wire or flat tape), and annealed to produce the desired superconducting properties. Intermediate anneals are often incorporated between successive deformation steps. Silver is the metal used in this process because it is the most compatible with the reacting phase. In all of the commercial processes for BSCCO, Ag seems to play a special catalytic role promoting the growth of high performance aligned grains that grow in the first few micrometers near the Ag/BSCCO interface. Adjacent to the Ag, the grain alignment is more perfect and the current density is higher than in the center of the tape. It is known that Ag lowers the melting point of several of the phases but the detailed mechanism for growth of these high performance grains is not clearly understood. The purpose of this work is to study the nucleation and growth of the high performance material at this interface