The Progress on Low-Cost, High-Quality, High-Temperature Superconducting Tapes Deposited by the Combustion Chemical Vapor Deposition Process

The innovative Combustion Chemical Vapor Deposition (CCVD) process is a non-vacuum technique that is being investigated to enable next generation products in several application areas including high-temperature superconductors (HTS). In combination with the Rolling Assisted Biaxially Textured Substrate (RABiTS) technology, the CCVD process has significant promise to provide low-cost, high-quality lengths of YBCO coated conductor. Over 100 meter lengths of both Ni and Ni-W (3 at. Wt.%) substrates with a surface roughness of 12-18 nm were produced. The CCVD technology has been used to deposit both buffer layer coatings as well as YBCO superconducting layers. Buffer layer architecture of strontium titanate (SrTiO{sub 3}) and ceria (CeO{sub 2}) have been deposited by CCVD on textured nickel substrates and optimized to appropriate thicknesses and microstructures to provide templates for growing PLD YBCO with a J{sub c} of 1.1 MA/cm{sup 2} at 77 K and self-field. The CCVD buffer layers have been scaled to meter plus lengths with good epitaxial uniformity along the length. A short sample cut from one of the lengths enabled high critical current density PLD YBCO. Films of CCVD YBCO superconductors have been grown on single crystal substrates with critical current densities over 1 MA/cm{sup 2}. In addition, superconductingmore » YBCO films with an I{sub c} of 60 A/cm-width (J{sub c} = 1.5 MA/cm{sup 2}) were grown on ORNL RABiTS (CeO{sub 2}/YSZ/Y{sub 2}O{sub 3}/Ni/Ni-3W) using CCVD process.« less