Preparation of MgO Self-Epitaxial Films for YBCO High-Temperature Coated Conductors

Ion beam-assisted deposition (IBAD) has been proposed as a promising texturing technology that uses the film epitaxy method to obtain biaxial texture on a non-textured metal or compound substrate. Magnesium oxide (MgO) is the most well explored texturing material. In order to obtain the optimal biaxial texture, the actual thickness of the IBAD-MgO film must be controlled within 12nm. Due to the bombardment of ion beams, IBAD-MgO has large lattice deformation, poor texture, and many defects in the films. In this work, the solution deposition planarization (SDP) method was used to deposit oxide amorphous Y2O3 films on the surface of Hastelloy C276 tapes instead of the electrochemical polishing, sputtering-Al2O3 and sputtering-Y2O3 in the commercialized buffer layer. An additional homogeneous epitaxy MgO (epi-MgO) layer, which was used to improve the biaxial texture in the IBAD-MgO layer, was deposited on the IBAD-MgO layer by electron-beam evaporation. The effects of growth temperature, film thickness, deposition rate, and oxygen pressure on the texture and morphology of the epi-MgO film were systematically studied. The best full width at half maximum (FWHM) values were 2.2 degrees for the out-of-plane texture and 4.8 degrees for the in-plane texture for epi-MgO films, respectively. Subsequently, the LaMnO3 cap layer and YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO) functional layer were deposited on the epi-MgO layer to test the quality of the MgO layer. Finally, the critical current density of the YBCO films was 6 MA/cm2 (77 K, 500 nm, self-field), indicating that this research provides a high-quality MgO substrate for the YBCO layer.

Automated summary

Ion beam-assisted deposition (IBAD) is a promising texturing technology for obtaining biaxial texture on a non-textured metal or compound substrate. In this study, the solution deposition planarization (SDP) method and electron-beam evaporation were used to deposit amorphous Y2O3 films and epitaxial MgO (epi-MgO) layer on the IBAD-MgO layer, respectively, to improve the texture. The results showed that the epi-MgO films had good texture quality.