Texture evolution of chemically deposited La2Zr2O7 buffer layer for coated conductors

Abstract

A thorough study of the growth and characterization of La2Zr2O7 (LZO) buffer layers prepared by chemical solution deposition on Ni–5at% W biaxially textured substrates is presented. The main focus is to understand the processes of film growth, texture evolution, and lattice misorientation during heat treatment to obtain biaxially textured LZO buffer layers with a high degree of texture. We report a systematic investigation of LZO film growth with varying cation concentrations and processing temperatures. 45° rotated misorientation crystallization is found to coexist with the cube-on-cube orientation and maybe partially formed by the transformation of the cube-on-cube orientation with increasing annealing temperature. The texture component improves with increasing surface crystallinity. These epitaxially grown LZO buffer layers have a dense and smooth structure and a texture component of 98–99%.