THERMAL-STABILITY AND STRUCTURAL ASPECTS OF Y1-XPRXBA2CU3ON-Y SOLID-SOLUTION

The complete Y1-xPrxBa2Cu3O7-y solid solution has been studied from th e point of view of thermodynamic and structural propel ties. DTA measu rements allowed us to deter mine the trend of the peritectic decomposi tion temperature and the eutectic one vs. the increasing of Pr content . These data can give some information about the primary crystallisati on field of these phases. FT-IR/FT-FIR skeletal characterisation of th e solid solution presents the vibrational modes of both YBCO and PrBCO phases; the increasing of one component percentage inside the solutio n gives rise to a progressive shift of the peaks towards the correspon ding frequencies of the end compounds. One of the vibrational modes, a ssigned to the asymmetric strain of the O-Cu-O units in the O-deficien t compounds, seems to be very sensitive to the oxygen content in the s amples.