Thickness effect of La2Zr2O7 single buffers on metallic substrates using pulsed laser deposition forYBa2Cu3O7−δ-coated conductors

Abstract

In the present work, the single buffer layers ofLa2Zr2O7 (LZO) with different thicknesses were prepared using pulsedlaser deposition (PLD) on highly textured Ni–5 at.%W tapes forYBa2Cu3O7−δ-coated conductors. The highly textured LZO layers are obtained on themetallic substrates, making the subsequent epitaxial growth of superconductingYBa2Cu3O7−δ layers feasible. The superconducting transition temperature increasesas the LZO thickness increases up to 240 nm, achieving a value ofTc of more than 92 K with a narrow transition width less than 1 K.Inductive measurement reveals that the critical current density (Jc) reaches0.77 MA cm−2 at 77 Kin self-field, showing that the single buffer of LZO is comparable to standard buffer architectures suchas CeO2/YSZ/Y2O3 or CeO2/LZO. This implies that the LZO as a single buffer layer is promising for the simplification of thepreparation process, leading to cost-effective coated conductors.