Chemical (Sr,Co)-doping effect on critical current density for Dy123 melt-solidified bulks

The dilute impurity doping for CuO-chain site was found to largely improve the critical current properties of both Y123 single crystals and Y123 melt-solidified bulks in our previous study. In addition, dilute Sr-doping to Ba site is also effective for enhancement of J(c) without serious decrease in T-c as in the case of dilute Zn doping for CuO2-plane site. In the present study, we have attempted further enhancement of flux pinning force of the Dy123 melt-solidified bulk, which is essentially more promising materials than Y123, by impurity doping for Cu site in the CuO-chain and for Ba site. Although the (Sr,Co)-co-doped Dy123 melt-solidified bulks showed systematically suppressed Tc with their doping levels, high T-c's well exceeding 90 K were maintained. All the Sr-doped or Co-doped Dy123 bulks exhibited higher J(c) than the undoped one. More improved J(c) properties were achieved by (Sr,Co)-co-doping, suggesting that pinning potential at local regions around doped impurities become deeper by Co-doping, resulting in stronger point-defect-like pinning sites. In addition, more detailed studies on the dilute Sr-doping and the dilute (Sr,Co)-Co-doping were carried out for Y123 single crystals in order to clarify the difference between their doping effects on the J(c) properties. The vortex transition field, H* to the disordered state in the M-H loops for the Co-doped Y123 single crystal was located at the lower field than that of the Sr-doped one, meaning that the Co ions strongly affect the vortex system compared with the Sr ions. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.