PROCESSING OF SINGLE-DOMAIN AND MULTIDOMAIN YBA2CU3OX BULK MATERIALS FOR LEVITATION APPLICATIONS BY ND1+XBA2-XCU3OY SEEDING

Melt processing of YBa2Cu3Ox (Y123) is a well established technique to produce materials for levitation applications. We report our new results on the melt-processing of Y123. To achieve materials with high levitation forces we utilize a seeding technique using Nd1+xBa2-xCu3Ogamma-seeds (Nd123). Two different kinds of Nd123-seeds, one plate-shaped and the other cube-shaped, were developed and used for this study. The microstructures of the levitators depended strongly on the type of the seeding material used and on the seeding geometry. We were able to produce large single domains as well as materials containing five domains with three different c-axis orientations. Levitation forces up to 8.2 N for samples with a diameter of about 18 mm were found for the multi-domain samples, which is well within the area of the levitation forces measured for the single domain materials.