“…The YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7À (YBCO or Y123) high-temperature superconductor has attracted a significant amount of attention since it was discovered in 1987 (Campbell & Cardwell, 1997;Werfel et al, 2012;Krabbes et al, 2006). Single crystals with a large size and high quality are extremely important for device applications (Bean, 1962;Ren et al, 1993;Morita et al, 1998;Fuchs et al, 2000;Tomita & Murakami, 2003;Babu et al, 2005;Treimer et al, 2012;Kenfaui et al, 2013Kenfaui et al, , 2015Grissonnanche et al, 2014) and fundamental studies (Krabbes et al, 2006;Headings et al, 2011). Of all the methods for growing YBCO single crystals, the self-flux technique (Krauns et al, 1994) is popularly used for producing small crystals.…”