High intergrain critical current density in fine-grain (Ba0.6K0.4)Fe2As2 wires and bulks

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that untextured polycrystalline (Ba0.6K0.4)Fe2As2 wires and bulks exhibit high intergrain critical current densities, significantly surpassing previous ferropnictide wires, due to improved phase purity and vortex stiffness.

Contribution

It shows that high critical current densities can be achieved in untextured polycrystalline Ba-122 superconductors, challenging the need for textured substrates.

Findings

Critical current densities over 0.1 MAcm-2 at 4.2 K.

Enhanced grain connectivity due to improved phase purity.

High vortex stiffness contributes to better superconducting performance.

Abstract

The K- and Co-doped BaFe2As2 (Ba-122) superconducting compounds are potentially useful for applications because they have upper critical fields (Hc2) of well over 50 T, Hc2 anisotropy Gamma < 2, and thin film critical current densities exceeding 1 MAcm-2 at 4.2 K. However, thin-film bicrystals of Co-doped Ba-122 clearly exhibit weak link behavior for [001] tilt misorientations of more than about 5 degrees, suggesting that textured substrates would be needed for applications, as in the cuprates. Here we present a contrary and very much more positive result in which untextured polycrystalline (Ba0.6K0.4)Fe2As2 bulks and round wires with high grain boundary density have transport critical current densities well over 0.1 MAcm-2 (SF, 4.2 K), more than 10 times higher than that of any other ferropnictide wire. The enhanced grain connectivity is ascribed to their much improved phase purity and to the enhanced vortex stiffness of this low-anisotropy compound (Gamma ~ 1-2) compared to YBa2Cu3O7-x (Gamma ~ 5).