Measurements of anisotropic thermopower of magnetically aligned YBa2Cu3O7-δ ceramics: Evidence of successful texturing techniques

Aligned YBa₂Cu₃O_7-δ ceramics have been obtained using a field of 1 T without being embedded in epoxy. Thermopower, XRD, and SEM are used to characterize the aligned ceramics. For the sample with δ = 0.05, the thermopower exhibits a strong anisotropy. The ab-plane thermopower behaves distinctly from that along the c-axis. The ab-plane thermopower shows remarkable similarities to that along the b-axis in an untwinned single crystal. The magnitude and temperature dependence of the c-axis thermopower are almost identical to those of a twinned single crystal. For samples with larger oxygen deficiency, the anisotropy remains. These measurements indicate that these ceramics are well aligned along their crystallographic directions. This also makes available the anisotropic thermopower measurements of ceramic samples by aligning polycrystallites using magnetic forces.