Investigation reveals that oxygen deficiencies at Cu-O chain sites affect transition temperatures in YBCO, suggesting new insights into superconductivity.
The superconducting transition temperature (Tc) in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7-δ (YBCO) exhibits a nonlinear dependence on oxygen deficiencies. It is thought to be related to which oxygen sites are deficient, but details are unclear due to a lack of experimental data. In this study, we investigated the sites of oxygen deficiencies in YBCO thin films with varying Tc using scanning transmission electron microscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy (STEM-EELS). We found that deficiencies appear mainly at the Cu-O chain sites in Tc ≈ 81 K and 64 K, while they appear at both Cu-O chain and CuO 2 planes sites in Tc ≈ 49 K. We discussed why the transition temperature is constant around 60 K regardless of the amount of oxygen deficiencies (60 K plateau).
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Liu et al. (2025) studied this question.
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