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Applied Superconductivity Group

 

Nucleation efficiency of industrial oxide buffers

Industrial oxide buffers, now used as template for 2G wires, tend to have low nucleation efficiency, i.e. they have density of nucleation sites lower that single-crystal substrate. This results in granularity of the YBCO layer and low performance. The goal of the project is to understand mechanism of the nucleation and find ways to improve the nucleation efficiency.

Optical micrographs of 0.2 micron thick partially processed YBCO films on (A) SrTiO3 and (B) a buffered metallic tape showing a very large difference in the densities of the nuclei depending on the types of the substrates. Inset in (A) is zoomed in by 2 x to show small nuclei on SrTiO3. YBCO nuclei are dark circles and the light background area is the unreacted precursor. The specimens were heated for 5 min. at T = 740 oC in a flowing gas mixture of p(H2O) = 70 Torr, p(O2) = 100 mTorr, and the balance, N2 from [1].
References

Superconductor Science and Technology, vol. 18 (2005), pp. 239-248, “Nucleation of YBa2Cu3O7-x on buffered metallic substrates in thick precursor films made by the BaF2 process”, Vyacheslav F Solovyov, Harold Wiesmann, and Masaki Suenaga.

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Last Modified: February 2, 2010
Please forward all questions about this site to: Robert Sundling
 


DOE, Office of Science One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE's Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by the Research Foundation for the State University of New York on behalf of Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit, applied science and technology organization.

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