Single cerium zirconate buffer layer on biaxially textured metal substrates for high performance coated conductors

Textured cerium zirconate (Ce x Zr1−x O2) films were deposited on biaxially textured Ni-5at.%W substrate by direct-current (dc) reactive magnetron sputtering for low cost production of high performance YBa2Cu3O7−δ (YBCO) coated conductors. Film composition was controlled by modulating dc power applied to the Ce metal target. X-ray diffraction analysis shows that all the samples exhibit epitaxial growth, with c-axis perpendicular to the substrate surface. The YBCO film deposited directly on the Ce0.32Zr0.68O2 layer for optimized lattice matching shows a transition temperature T c and critical current density J c (75.5 K, self field) of 90.4 K and 1.3 MA/cm2. The in-field dependence of J c is similar to the standard CeO2/YSZ/CeO2 buffered samples. These results demonstrate that a single Ce x Zr1−x O2 buffer layer, instead of CeO2/YSZ/CeO2 multi-buffer layers for the fabrication of YBCO coated conductors, provides advantages such as simplified architecture and potentially reduced cost due to the reduced fabrication steps.