This book presents the current knowledge about superconductivity in high Tc cuprate superconductors. There is a large scientific interest and great potential for technological applications. The book discusses all the aspects related to all families of cuprate superconductors discovered so far. Beginning with the phenomenon of superconductivity, the book covers: the structure of cuprate HTSCs, critical currents, flux pinning, synthesis of HTSCs, proximity effect and SQUIDs, possible applications of high Tc superconductors and theories of superconductivity. Though a high Tc theory is still awaited, this book describes the present scenario and BCS and RVB theories. The second edition was significantly extended by including film-substrate lattice matching and buffer layer considerations in thin film HTSCs, brick-wall microstructure in the epitaxial films, electronic structure of the CuO2 layer in cuprates, s-wave and d-wave coupling in HTSCs and possible scenarios of theories of high Tc superconductivity.

This book presents the current knowledge about superconductivity in high Tc cuprate superconductors. There is a large scientific interest and great potential for technological applications. The book discusses all the aspects related to all families of cuprate superconductors discovered so far. Beginning with the phenomenon of superconductivity, the book covers: the structure of cuprate HTSCs, critical currents, flux pinning, synthesis of HTSCs, proximity effect and SQUIDs, possible applications of high Tc superconductors and theories of superconductivity. Though a high Tc theory is still awaited, this book describes the present scenario and BCS and RVB theories. The second edition was significantly extended by including film-substrate lattice matching and buffer layer considerations in thin film HTSCs, brick-wall microstructure in the epitaxial films, electronic structure of the CuO2 layer in cuprates, s-wave and d-wave coupling in HTSCs and possible scenarios of theories of high Tc superconductivity.

The aim of this book is to acquaintthe reader with the phenomenon of sup- conductivity and the high temperature superconductors discovered in 1986 by Bednorz and Muller. Just after this discovery, a lot of research work was carried out by the scientists worldwide over for more than about 10 years. This book describes the superconductivity phenomenon (Chap. 1), the structureofhighT superconductors(Chap.2), thecriticalcurrents(Chap.3), c synthesis of high T superconductors (Chap. 3), the superconductivity in c cuprates (Chap. 4), proximity e?ect and SQUID devices, their design criteria and noise aspects (Chap. 6), theories (Chap. 7) and applications (Chap. 8). TheauthorisgratefultoProfessorO.N.Srivastava, BanarasHinduUniv- sity, VaranasiforvaluableguidanceanddiscussionsduringPh.D.tenureofthe author andalsothankful to Prof.R.S. Tiwari, Dr. K.Ramakrishna, Dr. Balak Das, Dr. K.K. Verma, Dr. G.D. Varma andDr. H.K. Singh, who workedalong with the author during researchat B.H.U., leading to his Ph.D. The author is thankful to Prof. D.P. Tiwari (Head, Physics Department, A.P.S. University, Rewa), Dr. A.P. Mishra and Dr. S.L. Agrawal, Physics Department, A.P.S. University, for boosting the morale. The author is thankful to scientists and researchers whose work/papers have been consulted for preparing the manuscript. Further I wish to express thanks to Mr. Dharmendra Saxena for preparing type-sc