Electrodeposited Biaxially Textured Buffer Layers for YBCO Superconductors

Nonvacuum electrodeposition (ED) was used to prepare a biaxially textured Gd₂Zr₂O₇ (GZO) buffer layer on a Ni-W substrates. The GZO buffer layer was capped with a pulsed laser deposited (PLD) CeO₂ layer. The YBa₂Cu₃O_7-delta (YBCO) superconductor was deposited by metallorganic deposition (MOD) on a simplified ED-GZO/PLD-CeO₂ buffer layer. The buffer layers and YBCO superconductor were characterized by X-ray diffraction (including thetas/2thetas, pole figure, omega scans, and phi scans), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Full-width at half maximum values of the omega (omega) and phi (Phi) scans of the electrodeposited GZO layer were better than those of the Ni-W base substrate. At 77 K and a self-magnetic field, the critical current density of MOD YBCO on the electrodeposited-based buffer layer was 1.31 x 10⁶ A/cm² , using the field criterion of 1 muV/cm.