Microstructural Factors Influencing Critical-Current Densities of High-Temperature Superconductors

Microstructural defects are the primary determining factors for the values of critical current densities in superconductors. A review is made to assess, (1) what would be the maximum achievable critical-current density in the oxide superconductors if nearly ideal pinning sites were introduced and (2) what types of pinning defects are currently introduced in these superconductors and how effective are these in pinning the vortices Only the case where the applied field is parallel to the c-axis is considered here