All MOD buffer/YBCO approach to coated conductors

RABiTS based metal-organic deposition (MOD) buffer/YBa2Cu3O7-delta (YBCO) approach has been considered as one of the potential, low-cost approaches to fabricate high performance second generation coated conductors. The most commonly used RABiTS architectures consisting of a starting template of biaxially textured Ni-W (5 at.%) substrate with a seed layer Of Y2O3, a barrier layer of YSZ, and a CeO2 cap. In this three layer architecture, all the buffers are deposited using physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques. Using these PVD deposited templates, 0.8-mu m thick MOD-YBCO films with an I-c (critical current) of 250 A/cm have been achieved routinely in short lengths. We have developed a low-cost, non-vacuum, MOD process to grow epitaxial buffer layers on textured Ni-5W substrates. The main challenge in this effort is to match the performance of MOD templates to that of PVD templates. We have recently shown that the properties of MOD-La2Zr2O7 (LZO) layers can be improved by inserting a thin Y2O3 seed layer. Using MOD-CeO2 cap layers, we have demonstrated the growth of high performance MOD-YBCO films with an I-c of 200 A/cm-width on MOD-La2Zr2O7/Y2O3/Ni-5W substrates. This approach could potentially decrease the overall cost of the coated conductor fabrication. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.