Fabrication of (Nd 0.33 Eu 0.33 Gd 0.33 )Ba 2 Cu 3 O y Superconducting Thin Films by Pulsed Laser Ablation of Melt-Textured Targets

The melt-textured (Nd0.33Eu0.33Gd0.33)Ba2Cu3Oy (NEG-123)+ Gd2BaCuO5 (Gd-211) is one of the best existing materials amongst bulk oxides superconductors in terms of achievable pinning performance. In this study, we focus laser beam on dense melt-textured NEG-123 + Gd-211 targets, to fabricate thin films of the same composition, by means of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) system. The optimization process of finding a good quality thin film has been done by considering various parameters such as deposition temperature and time, chamber O2 pressure, and annealing time. Our studies suggest that the optimal deposition conditions are as follows: deposition temperature of 800 °C for 30 min with in-situ O2 pressure of 600 mTorr. These optimized films with thickness of 300 nm depict the transition temperature (Tc) of 92.6 K and upper critical field (μ0Hc2) 0f 173 T.