An all chemical solution deposition approach for the growth of highly texturedCeO2 caplayers on La2Zr2O7-buffered long lengths of biaxially textured Ni–W substrates for YBCO-coatedconductors

Abstract

A reel-to-reel, dip coating process has been developed to continuously deposit epitaxialLa2Zr2O7 (LZO)and CeO2 on 5 m long cube-textured {100} (001)Ni tapes. Recent results forLa2Zr2O7 and CeO2 buffer layers deposited on long lengths of Ni substrate for the realization ofYBa2Cu3O7−x (YBCO)-coated conductors are presented. The major achievement is thedevelopment of a new all chemical solution deposition (CSD) process leading to theformation of highly textured buffer layers at moderate annealing temperatures.Reproducible highly textured, dense and crack-free LZO buffer layers andCeO2 cap layers were obtained for annealing temperatures as low as900 °C in a reducingatmosphere (Ar–5 at.%-H2). The thickness of the LZO buffer layers was determined to be(200 ± 10) nm per single coating; prepared cerium oxide layers showed a thickness of60 nm ± 10 nm. Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) was used to grow YBCO films on these substrates. ATc 0 ofT = 90.5 K andΔTc = 1.4 K was obtained onPLD-YBCO/CSD-CeO2 /CSD-LZO/Ni–5 at.% W, which shows the outstanding features of this new buffer layerarchitecture processed by CSD. The large layer thickness combined with lowannealing temperatures is the main advantage of this new process for low-cost bufferlayer deposition on Ni-RABiTS (rolling-assisted biaxially textured substrates).