Fabrication of meter-long coated conductor using RABiTS-PVD methods

The practical application of HTS materials in power devices requires the HTS conductor which is long, powerful (high current carrying), and affordable. Many different methods for making practical coated conductor include multiple ways of obtaining texture templates and a variety of film deposition methods which include both physical and chemical routes. In this work, three film deposition systems (pulsed laser deposition, sputtering, and evaporation) equipped with reel-to-reel metal tape moving apparatus were installed and used to make meter-long coated conductor. Buffer architecture of CeO₂/YSZ/Y₂O₃ was continuously deposited on Ni alloy using sputtering, evaporation, and PLD. YBCO superconducting layer was continuously deposited on buffered metal tape by pulsed laser deposition. End-to-end critical current I_c of 80 A and critical current density J_c of 1.3 MA cm^-2 for 600 nm-thick YBCO at 77 K, self-field have been achieved in 1 cm-wide tape over 1 meter length. Longitudinal distribution of the I_c values was between 72 A/cm and 90 A/cm.