Shimon Reich The Robert W. Reneker Professor of Industrial Chemistry Department of Materials and Interfaces Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot 76100, Israel Tel. 972-8-9342588 E-mail:   shimon.reich@weizmann.ac.il

High Temperature Superconductivity

Our main area of research is material science of high temperature ceramic superconductors. Since the discovery in 1986 of superconductivity in ceramic cuprates, there is a major effort to give these materials desirable physical and mechanical properties to make them useful candidates for application in micro-electonics as magnetic sensors, superconducting tapes and wires, frictionless bearings and magnetic suspension devices. We have focused on two topics:

• Preparation of mercury cuprates films by a novel sol-gel method developed in our group. These films exhibit currently the highest critical transition temperature to the superconducting state, 134° K.

• Preparation of bulk YBa₂Cu₃O7-d melt-textured superconductors using a fast melt fast quench process in a solar furnace. The product exhibits high critical current density
  ~10⁴ Amp/cm² at liquid nitrogen temperature and in a field of a few Tesla. This performance is achieved by inclusion of microscopic normal particles, which serve as effective pinning centers for the magnetic flux, in the superconducting melt-textured matrix.

The Meissner effect: magnetic disk floating above
a ceramic superconductor cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature

Relevant Publications:

1. Structural and Magnetic Properties of Silver Doped Melt-Textured YBCO Prepared in a Solar Furnace
   T.Godin and S.Reich
   Applied Superconductivity (1998).
2. Growth Mode of HgBa₂Ca₂Cu₃O_8+dS.C. Films Prepared by a Sol-Gel Method on Y_0.15Zr_0.85O_1.93 Substrates
   S.Reich and Y.Tsabba
   Advanced Materials 9, 329 (1997).