Improvement of superconducting properties of old Y–Ba–Cu–O specimens by high-energy heavy ion irradiation

Superconducting parameters of different, almost 20 years old Y–Ba–Cu–O samples, prepared in 1987–1988 are investigated. The aim of this research is to find out how a heavy ion beam can enhance the superconducting features of very old and originally not always perfect Y-based specimens. As is observed, their electrical and magnetic characteristics are very sensitive to high-energy Bi-ion irradiation, which results in significant increase of the superconducting parameters. The most important one of them is the global critical current density which is calculated with the help of a new method on the basis of experiments. It can be increased by 18–39%, depending on the original, starting conditions of the samples before the irradiation. At the same time, the average values of intragrain critical current density grows by 37–51%. A slight increase in the critical temperature of 1–2 K was also observed. The experiments on AC susceptibility demonstrate that this irradiation causes to develop faster the total diamagnetic state and decreases the loss. The reason of these effects can be found in the better orientation of crystals, enlargement of microcrystalline aggregates, higher homogenization of the material, thus, in the increase of the superconducting component of samples due to the irradiation.