Investigated stiffness of high performance superconductivity with nanoceria incorporated into polycrystalline magnesium diboride

Abstract

Polycrystalline MgB 2 was prepared with different amounts of nano-sized CeO 2 inclusions, subjected to X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy characterisation. The nano-CeO 2 inclusions were found to affect the lattice parameters because of nanoinclusions up to 2wt. The stiffness was investigated and the morphology of pure powders reveals randomly oriented grains and cleans grain boundaries, whereas with nanoinclusions, grain surfaces and boundaries were decorated with nano-sized CeO 2 particles. Significant enhancement of the superconducting critical current density J c was observed because of nano-CeO 2 addition. The obtained results are in good agreement with other experimental and theoretical results.