Preparation of MgO Self-Epitaxial Films for YBCO High-Temperature Coated Conductors

oleh: Fei Yu, Yan Xue, Chaowei Zhong, Jiayi Song, Qiong Nie, Xin Hou, Baolei Wang

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2023-10-01

Deskripsi

Ion beam-assisted deposition (IBAD) has been proposed as a promising texturing technology that uses the film epitaxy method to obtain biaxial texture on a non-textured metal or compound substrate. Magnesium oxide (MgO) is the most well explored texturing material. In order to obtain the optimal biaxial texture, the actual thickness of the IBAD-MgO film must be controlled within 12nm. Due to the bombardment of ion beams, IBAD-MgO has large lattice deformation, poor texture, and many defects in the films. In this work, the solution deposition planarization (SDP) method was used to deposit oxide amorphous Y<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> films on the surface of Hastelloy C276 tapes instead of the electrochemical polishing, sputtering-Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> and sputtering-Y<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> in the commercialized buffer layer. An additional homogeneous epitaxy MgO (epi-MgO) layer, which was used to improve the biaxial texture in the IBAD-MgO layer, was deposited on the IBAD-MgO layer by electron-beam evaporation. The effects of growth temperature, film thickness, deposition rate, and oxygen pressure on the texture and morphology of the epi-MgO film were systematically studied. The best full width at half maximum (FWHM) values were 2.2° for the out-of-plane texture and 4.8° for the in-plane texture for epi-MgO films, respectively. Subsequently, the LaMnO<sub>3</sub> cap layer and YBa<sub>2</sub>Cu<sub>3</sub>O<sub>7</sub>-x (YBCO) functional layer were deposited on the epi-MgO layer to test the quality of the MgO layer. Finally, the critical current density of the YBCO films was 6 MA/cm<sup>2</sup> (77 K, 500 nm, self-field), indicating that this research provides a high-quality MgO substrate for the YBCO layer.