Fabrication of cuprate superconducting La1.85Sr0.15CuO4 nanofibers by electrospinning and subsequent calcination in oxygen

The synthesis of high-temperature cuprate superconducting La1.85Sr0.15CuO4 (LSCO) flute-like nanofibers (FNFs) via electrospinning and subsequent calcination in oxygen is reported. A reduced superconducting critical temperature was found to be around 19.2 K, a considerable decrease in comparison to its bulk counterpart (similar to 37 K). The weakened superconductivity in the LSCO FNFs is relevant to the following observations that (i) the presence of disorder or the amount of structural defects in the FNFs, (ii) the ab-plane dilatation (similar to 0.41%) and c-axis-compression (similar to 0.16%) distortions, leads to the reduced in-plane hybridization, and (iii) the suppression of A(1g) Raman-active phonon mode similar to 430 cm(-1) and enhancement of B-1g mode similar to 370 cm(-1), is associated with the weakened electron-phonon coupling interaction. Our work demonstrates a clean'' high-yield nanofabrication of high-temperature cuprate superconducting materials.