Fabrication and characterization of cube textured Ni substrate for YBCO coated conductors

We fabricated Ni-substrates for YBCO coated conductors applying by powder metallurgy technique and evaluated the effects of pressing and annealing time on the texture. Compacts were prepared applying uniaxial or isostatic pressure. The texture of the substrate, made by applying cold isostatic pressure (CIP), was stronger than that by uniaxial pressure. We attribute this to the fact that the CIP method provided higher density and more uniform density distribution. The texture of the substrate made by CIP had a strong 4-fold symmetry and [111]||ND texture after annealing at a temperature of 1000 °C. It was noted that the degree of texture was almost independent of annealing time and the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of in-plane and out-of-plane were measured to be in the range of 9.55° - 10.53° and 8.57° - 9.85°, respectively. The development of strong cube texture and high fraction of low angle grain boundaries of Ni-substrates made by powder metallurgy technique in our study was considered to be useful in the deposition of YBCO coated conductors.