Interfaces in high-Tc superconducting oxides are influential during both the processing of bulk materials and the growth of thin epitactically aligned layers. In the first case, the formation of the superconducting phase involves the movement of phase boundaries during the solid-state reaction, while in the second, the phase boundary is formed as the superconducting material grows on the single-crystal substrate. Having formed the superconducting material, the superconducting phase will, in general, contain a large number of grain boundaries varying from the simple twin boundaries which can be produced during the cubic-to-tetragonal transformation, to low-angle grain boundaries, special high-angle grain boundaries, other high-angle grain boundaries and phase boundaries due to incomplete or on-going solid-state reactions. During the course of this presentation, recent results on these topics will be reviewed, paying particular attention to the more widely studied material, YBa2Cu3O6+x.The importance of grain boundaries in high-Tc superconducting oxides has been firmly established by the systematic analysis of Dimos et al who have shown that the misorientation of the grains in layers of YBa2Cu3O6+x which had been grown on polycrystalline SrTiO3 substrate varies with the relative misorientation between the grains.
Field Enhanced Intrinsic Fluctuations in Highly Oriented High Tc Thin Films