Effective magnetic pinning schemes for enhanced superconducting property in high temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O7-x: a review

Enhanced superconducting properties under magnetic field in high temperature superconductors are critical for their technological applications and can be enhanced by both defect pinning and magnetic pinning. Different from defect pinning introduced by nonmagnetic pinning centers, magnetic pinning has some advantages over defect pinning, as it pins the magnetic flux rather than the normal core vortices. Various magnetic materials and different designed architectures have been demonstrated to provide magnetic pinning effect. Four major pinning schemes including metal/YBCO, oxide/YBCO, nanocomposite/YBCO and nanoparticle embedded YBCO have been reviewed. Representative literatures for each magnetic pinning scheme are discussed in detail to explore the pinning enhancement for each scheme. In addition, combined magnetic pinning and defect pinning schemes are proposed to further improve superconducting properties.