Chemical solution growth of CeO₂ buffer and YBCO layers on IBAD-YSZ/Hastelloy templates

Low-cost and commercially viable processes to fabricate coated conductors are necessary for application in electric-power technologies. We demonstrate the chemical solution growth of CeO₂ buffer and YBCO layers on IBAD-YSZ/Hastelloy templates. Very good biaxially textured CeO₂ buffer layers can be formed by the chemical solution method using inorganic cerium nitrate precursors. Through control of the solution molarity, very uniform, smooth, and dense CeO₂ buffer layers can be obtained. Subsequently, the YBCO films were deposited by metallorganic deposition using the trifluoroacetic (TFA-MOD) method. High-critical-current-density (J _c) YBCO films were obtained, with the transport current density of about 1.2 MA cm^-2 (77 K, 0 T). The onset transition temperature is as high as 94.5 K, and the transition width is about 1.3 K. Hence, the mature IBAD technique, combined with the low-cost solution method, can provide a very promising robust process for fabrication of low-cost YBCO coated conductor on a large scale.