On Critical Current Enhancement in Dislocated, Deoxygenated and Particle Irradiated Superconductors: A Unified Approach

A unified approach for description of the anomalous critical current enhancement in dislocated, deoxygenated, and particle irradiated superconductors is proposed based on a novel concept of "active pinning" (pinning via external fields modified intrinsic Josephson junctions) and existence of various competitive forces affecting a rather delicate balance between extended defects (dislocations) and point defects (oxygen vacancies) inside a crystal. The proposed scenario implies that practically any treatment of the superconducting sample (such as sintering, melt-texturing, silver coating, thermal and mechanical treatment, oxygenation/deoxygenation process, particle irradiation, application of high magnetic and electric fields) will inevitably result in a "self-organized" rearrangement of the pre-treated defect structure of the material to optimize its pinning ability.