Thick $\hbox {YBa}_{2}\hbox {Cu}_{3}\hbox {O}_{7-\delta }$ Superconducting Films by Low-Fluorine Metallorganic Solution Deposition

YBa₂Cu₃O_7-δ (YBCO) coated conductor has been a promising candidate for high-current transportation material in industry, while the critical current (I_c) becomes a limitation for large-scale application. An efficient way to improve I_c is to increase the thickness of YBCO film without much reduction in critical current density (J_c). Metallorganic solution deposition (MOD) is a traditional method to fabricate YBCO films while it takes time as long as 10h during the pyrolysis process. In comparison, Low-Fluorine MOD (LF-MOD) method is applied to reduce the pyrolysis time to less than 2h. In this paper, we successfully obtain YBCO thick films up to 1.7μm by double dip coating process using low-fluorine MOD method. Though wrinkles are frequently observed on the surface of the first layer after pyrolysis at 400 °C for 0.5h, the surface of the final double coated YBCO thick film is homogeneous and cracks are hardly found. Further tests show relatively good c-axis orientation and J_c value of about 10⁵ A/cm² at 77K. With an optimization for the pyrolysis and crystallization processes, better superconducting properties of YBCO thick film are expected.