Crystal growth of superconductive oxide from oxide melts

Growth of single crystals and highly oriented polycrystals of bulk high critical temperature (Tc) superconductive oxide (HTSC) materials is reviewed. Through the studies of semi-solid processing of the unidirectional solidification for YBa2Cu3Oy (Y123) superconductive materials, the unique peritectic reaction was proposed and its model analysis was performed. The predictions by the model were in good agreement with the experimental phenomena. Furthermore, based on this idea, a special solution growth process for producing large single crystals even in the incongruent system was developed. Actually, the large single crystals with high quality were obtained and its concept was expanded to the liquid phase epitaxy process which realized large high quality thick films with short time.