Growth-related inhomogeneities in bulk melt-grown YBaCuO crystals

The homogeneity of a large YBaCuO sample fabricated by top-seeded melt-growth has been studied in details. It was particularly shown how structural imperfections and superconducting properties are distributed along the growth front. These distributions are scarcely explicable within a suggestion that the a-growth fronts are flat. The obtained data testify to concave growth fronts.