Evaluation of CuO2 plane hole doping in YBa2Cu3O6+x single crystals

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to evaluate hole doping levels in YBa2Cu3O6+x using lattice parameters, and discusses the relationship between doping, critical temperature, and structural effects.

Contribution

It introduces an empirical relationship between c-axis lattice parameter and hole doping p in YBCO, including a correction for the p=1/8 doping anomaly.

Findings

p can be calculated from c-axis lattice parameter across doping range

The Tc vs. p parabola is valid except near p=1/8

A correction for Tc suppression at p=1/8 is proposed

Abstract

The electron hole concentration p in the CuO2 planes of YBa2Cu3O6+x (YBCO) has been evaluated using the unit cell length in the c-direction together with a simple estimation for p in the chain oxygen ordered phases. The empirical relationship between p and c obtained allows calculation of p from the c-axis lattice parameter for the entire doping range of YBCO. It is also suggested that the empirical parabola describing the relationship between Tc and p in La2-dSrdCuO4 is reasonably correct for YBCO except for the region around p =1/8, where the Tc of YBCO is suppressed by as much as 17 K. A correction of the parabola for the p = 1/8 effect is presented.