It is part of the more general group of rare-earth barium copper oxides (ReBCO) in which, instead of yttrium, other rare earths are present.

Following Bednorz and Müller's discovery, a team led by Paul Ching Wu Chu at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and University of Houston discovered that YBCO has a superconducting transition critical temperature (Tc) of 93 K.[3] The first samples were Y1.2Ba0.8CuO4, but this was an average composition for two phases, a black and a green one.

YBCO is a crystalline material, and the best superconductive properties are obtained when crystal grain boundaries are aligned by careful control of annealing and quenching temperature rates.

However, new possibilities have been opened since the discovery that trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a source of fluorine, prevents the formation of the undesired barium carbonate (BaCO3).

Routes such as CSD (chemical solution deposition) have opened a wide range of possibilities, particularly in the preparation of long YBCO tapes.

Although the coherence length in the a-b plane is 5 times greater than that along the c axis it is quite small compared to classic superconductors such as niobium (where ξ ≈ 40 nm).

This modest coherence length means that the superconducting state is more susceptible to local disruptions from interfaces or defects on the order of a single unit cell, such as the boundary between twinned crystal domains.

Novel variants on CVD, PVD, and solution deposition techniques are used to produce long lengths of the final YBCO layer at high rates.

[citation needed] The superconducting tape is used for SPARC, a tokamak fusion reactor design that can achieve breakeven energy production.

Corrosion inhibition, polymer adhesion and nucleation, preparation of organic superconductor/insulator/high-Tc superconductor trilayer structures, and the fabrication of metal/insulator/superconductor tunnel junctions have been developed using surface-modified YBCO.

In 1987, shortly after it was discovered, physicist and science author Paul Grant published in the U.K. Journal New Scientist a straightforward guide for synthesizing YBCO superconductors using widely-available equipment.

[17] Thanks in part to this article and similar publications at the time, YBCO has become a popular high-temperature superconductor for use by hobbyists and in education, as the magnetic levitation effect can be easily demonstrated using liquid nitrogen as coolant.

In 2021, SuperOx, a Russian and Japanese company, developed a new manufacturing process for making YBCO wire for fusion reactors.