Discovered in 1986, LBCO was the first high-temperature superconductor; Johannes Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.
Ba(II) substitution for La(III) hole-dopes the copper-oxide sheets, switching the compound's ground state from Mott insulating to superconducting.
Superconductivity is partly suppressed at the x = 1/8 doping level by charge-stripe order, with optimal doping near x = 0.16.