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In order to understand how the doping with self-assembled nanorods of different sizes and concentrations as well as applied magnetic fields affect the critical current anisotropy in YBa2Cu3O7−x (YBCO) thin films close to YBCO c-axis, we present an extensive and systematic computational study done by molecular dynamics simulation. The simulations are also used to understand experimentally measured J c (θ) curves for BaHfO3, BaZrO3 and BaSnO3 doped YBCO thin films with the help of nanorod parameters obtained from transmission electron microscopy measurements. Our simulations reveal that the relation between applied and matching field plays a crucial role in the formation of J c (θ)-peak around YBCO c-axis (c-peak) due to vortex-vortex interactions. We also find how different concentrations of different size nanorods effect the shape of the c-peak and explain how different features, such as double c-peak structures, arise. In addition to this, we have quantitatively explained that, even in an ideal superconductor, the overdoping of nanorods results in decrease of the critical current. Our results can be widely used to understand and predict the critical current anisotropy of YBCO thin films to improve and develop new pinscapes for various transport applications.

The flux pinning properties of the high temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O7−δ (YBCO) have been conventionally improved by creating both columnar and dot-like pinning centres into the YBCO matrix. To study the effects of differently doped multilayer structures on pinning, several samples consisting of a multiple number of individually BaZrO3 (BZO) and BaCeO3 (BCO) doped YBCO layers were fabricated. In the YBCO matrix, BZO forms columnar and BCO dot-like defects. The multilayer structure improves pinning capability throughout the whole angular range, giving rise to a high critical current density, J c. However, the BZO doped monolayer reference still has the most isotropic J c. Even though BZO forms nanorods, in this work the samples with multiple thin layers do not exhibit a c axis peak in the angular dependence of J c. The angular dependencies and the approximately correct magnitude of J c were also verified using a molecular dynamics simulation.