Fabrication of Tri-axially Oriented RE-Ba-Cu-O Ceramics by Magnetic Alignment

Magnetic alignment is a new crystal alignment process which enables tri-axial orientation without epitaxial growth at room temperature. In order to investigate the effectiveness of this magnetic tri-axial alignment process, we attempted to fabricate tri-axially oriented ErBa2Cu4O8 (Er124) ceramics by a slip-casting technique under two different modulated rotation magnetic fields (MRFs); uni-directional rotation type and oscillation type. For improvement of the degrees of tri-axial orientation in the Er124 green compacts slip-casted under MRFs, appropriate choice of sample-rotation method, magnetic field condition, control of mean diameter of source powders, and viscosity of slurry was found to be important in the case of MRFs induced by the sample-rotation. At the current stage, the degree of inplane orientation with ∼10̊ in Er124 was achieved.