Effect of Target Density on the Surface Morphology of Y-Ba-Cu-O Thin Films Prepared by Ionized Jet Deposition

Abstract

Ionized jet deposition (IJD) is a pulse electron deposition method. It can be used for the preparation of thin films from a wide spectrum of materials on different substrates. The main benefits of IJD are high flexibility and a possibility to change many of the deposition parameters. Some of them even during the deposition such as acceleration voltage, working gas, substrate temperature, etc. The wide variability of the deposition parameters allows finding the ideal conditions for the preparation of thin films of almost any material. This deposition method has a great potential for a cost-effective scale-up of HTS (High-temperature Superconductors) tapes fabrication. This research is focused on the study of the influence of target density on the microstructure of the deposited YBCO thin layers. The target density has an important role in the morphology of thin films. In this work, the deposition parameters were fixed (except for target density). The distance between substrate and target was 110 mm and substrate temperatures were set to 650 °C. The targets and samples were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and LED Confocal profilometer. Nine different YBCO targets with densities from 3.8 g·cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> to 5.6 g·cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> were prepared in total. All targets were prepared from a single batch of precursor powder at ambient atmosphere and different sintering temperatures and times.