Abstract
A critical current density, Jc, is an important basic property of superconducting electronic applications. The high-Tc superconducting YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO) ceramics can be given a preferred grain orientation by the hot-forging (H.F.) method, because the ceramics have a large anisotropic crystal structure. We confirmed that the grain-orientation effects on the superconducting properties of the H.F. YBCO ceramics enhance them. The grains in the H.F. ceramics were oriented so that the c-axis was in a forging direction. The grain-orientation factor, F(=0.3∼0.5), could be estimated by X-ray diffraction patterns. The Jc [=110 A/cm2] of the grain-oriented (H.F.) sample was elevated to one and a half times [=74 A/cm2] that of the nonoriented sample.