• Progress in Superconductivity
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.173-176
• /
• 2008

[ $MgB_2$ ] films grown by hybrid physical chemical vapor deposition under appropriate growth conditions commonly exhibit columnar grain structure. The grain boundaries between adjacent columnar grains have been reported to be good flux pinning centers. In this work, we measured the angular dependence of critical current density ($J_c$) and observed the enhanced flux pinning when an external magnetic field was aligned parallel to the columnar direction. This $J_c$ was almost comparable to the $J_c$ for intrinsic pinning case up to 1 T at low temperatures, indicating that grain boundary pinning is very effective. At high fields, however, $J_c$ decreased rapidly resulting from the fact that the density of flux pinning centers provided by grain boundaries was outnumbered by the flux density.

• Progress in Superconductivity
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.30-33
• /
• 2012

We have grown $MgB_2$ superconducting thin films on the SiC buffer layers by means of hybrid physical-chemical vapor deposition (HPCVD) technique. Prior to that, SiC was first deposited on $Al_2O_3$ substrates at various temperatures from room temperature to $600^{\circ}C$ by using the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method in a vacuum atmosphere of ${\sim}10^{-6}$ Torr pressure. All samples showed a high transition temperature of ~40 K. The grain boundaries of $MgB_2$ samples with SiC layer are greater in amount, compare to that of the pure $MgB_2$ samples. $MgB_2$ with SiC buffer layer samples show interesting change in the critical current density ($J_c$) values. Generally, at both 5 K and 20 K measurements, at lower magnetic field, all $MgB_2$ films deposited on SiC buffer layers have low $J_c$ values, but when they reach higher magnetic fields of nearly 3.5 Tesla, $J_c$ values are enhanced. $MgB_2$ film with SiC grown at $600^{\circ}C$ has the highest $J_c$ enhancement at higher magnetic fields, while all SiC buffer layer samples exhibit higher $J_c$ values than that of the pure $MgB_2$ films. A change in the grain boundary morphologies of $MgB_2$ films due to SiC buffer layer seems to be responsible for $J_c$ enhancements at high magnetic fields.