Critical currents in sputtered YBCO films

The angular dependence of Jc was investigated for c-axis oriented sputtered YBCO films. The observed features can be described neither by a 2D- nor by a 3D-anisotropic Ginzburg-Landau theory. An intrinsic pinning mechanism, effective only within a critical angle theta c between the applied magnetic field and the copper oxide planes, has to be considered in order to describe the sharp and narrow peaks of Jc at high fields and high temperatures. Neutron irradiation results also seem to be in favour of an intrinsic pinning model.