Microstructures and superconducting properties of high performance MgB2 thin films deposited from a high-purity, dense Mg–B target

Abstract

High quality, c-axis oriented, MgB2 thin films were successfully grown on 6H-SiC substrates using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) with subsequent in situ annealing. To obtain high purity films free from oxygen contamination, a dense Mg–B target was specially made from a high temperature, high pressure reaction of Mg and B to form large-grained (10–50μm) MgB2. Microstructural analysis via electron microscopy found that the resulting grains of the film were composed of ultrafine columnar grains of 19–30nm. XRD analysis showed the MgB2 films to be c-axis oriented; the a-axis and c-axis lattice parameters were determined to be 3.073±0.005Å and 3.528±0.010Å, respectively. The superconducting critical temperature, Tc,onset, increased monotonically as the annealing temperature was increased, varying from 25.2K to 33.7K. The superconducting critical current density as determined from magnetic measurements, Jcm, at 5K, was 105A/cm2 at 7.8T; at 20K, 105A/cm2 was reached at 3.1T. The transport and pinning properties of these films were compared to “powder-in-tube” (PIT) and “internal-infiltration” (AIMI) processed wires. Additionally, examination of the pinning mechanism showed that when scaled to the peak in the pinning curve, the films follow the grain boundary, or surface, pinning mechanism quite well, and are similar to the response seen for C doped PIT and AIMI strands, in contrast to the behavior seen in undoped PIT wires, in which deviations are seen at high b (b=B/Bc2). On the other hand, the magnitude of the pinning force was similar for the thin films and AIMI conductors, unlike the values from connectivity-suppressed PIT strands.