Effect of growth temperature on properties of bulk GdBa₂Cu₃O_y superconductors grown by IG process

Recently, the flux pinning performance of Y-123 material was dramatically improved by optimizing the processing conditions during the Infiltration-Growth (IG) process. In the present work, we adapted the top- seeded IG technique and produced several 20 wt.% AgO₂ doped bulk GdBa₂Cu₃O_y (GdBCO or Gd-123) samples at different growth temperatures of 983, 985, 986, 987, 989, 990, and 992 °C with the same holding time of 25 h. Our results indicate that the bulk GdBCO samples dwelled at 986 °C is the optimum temperature to produce large Gd-123 growth without spontaneous nucleation. Magnetization measurements on 986 °C dwelled composite showed a sharp superconducting transition with T_{c, onset} at 93.6 K. The critical current density at 77 K and self-field was 16,500 A/cm². The critical current density values are correlated with the microstructural changes in the bulk Gd-123 materials.