Effect of additions Titanium Oxide on mechanical and physical properties of YBCO superconductor by co-precipitation method

In this project TiO2 was used for addition into YBCO to retain the crystal structure at orthorhombic structure. The purposes of this project were to evaluate the effect of TiO2 on crystal structure of YBCO and to investigate the influence on the physical and mechanical properties on YBCO. 5 different weight percentage of TiO2 were added to the YBCO. Moreover, the YBCO is synthesized by using 2 different methods, where co-precipitation and a hybrid method, which is a combination of co-precipitation and solid-state process. The addition of TiO2 were control at 0.00 wt%, 1.25 wt%, 2.50wt%, 3.75% and 5.00wt%. The evaluation was conducted by using BRUKER PHASER S2 for XRD analysis, JEOL JSM IT-100 scanning electron microscope for phase identification and Testometric M500-50CT Universal Testing Machine for compression testing. The overall crystal structure of YBCO retained at orthorhombic structure. The grain size of YBCO decreased as the amount of titanium oxide in YBCO increased. However, the overall compressive resistance of the YBCO decrease when the weight percentage of TiO2 increased but the ductility increased as the weight percentage of TiO2 increased.