Investigated stiffness of high performance superconductivity with nanoceria incorporated into polycrystalline magnesium diboride

Polycrystalline MgB₂ was prepared with different amounts of nano-sized CeO₂ inclusions, subjected to X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy characterisation. The nano-CeO₂ inclusions were found to affect the lattice parameters because of nanoinclusions up to 2 wt% . The stiffness was investigated and the morphology of pure powders reveals randomly oriented grains and cleans grain boundaries, whereas with nanoinclusions, grain surfaces and boundaries were decorated with nano-sized CeO₂ particles. Significant enhancement of the superconducting critical current density J_c was observed because of nano-CeO₂ addition. The obtained results are in good agreement with other experimental and theoretical results.