IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 21, NO.
3, JUNE 2011
Fabrication of Gd1Ba2Cu3Ox Coated Conductors
for HTS Cables
K. Abiru, Y. Shingai, M. Konishi, and K. Ohmatsu
Abstract—We have been fabricating Gd Ba Cu O
1 2 3 x
(GdBCO) coated conductors (CCs) on textured clad-type sub-
strates by using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method for high
temperature superconducting (HTS) power cables. In this project,
numerous numbers of CCs are required for fabricating a 66 kV
class, 3-in-One HTS cable and for the evaluation of its properties.
In order to achieve this, it is important to ensure the stable pro-
duction and the high-throughput manufacturing. In this work,
we have newly installed a high power laser of 300 W for the PLD
equipment, which has 1.66 times higher power than the previous
one. As a result, the stability of manufacturing and the production
rate were greatly improved. In addition, we have adopted a wide
tape approach using 30 mm width substrates to increase the
throughput. Moreover, we have optimized deposition condition
for a seed layer by electron beam (EB) evaporation method, then
the maximum c value for a short sample has achieved 497 A/cm
at 77 K in the self-field. With this improved process, long GdBCO
tapes with high c have been successfully fabricated.
Index Terms—GdBCO coated conductors, high-temperature su-
perconductors, PLD method, superconducting tapes.
I. INTRODUCTION
I N recent years, significant progress has been made in
production of long high critical current REBCO (RE: rare
earth systems) coated conductors all over the world [1], [2], and
R & D have been carried out on applications of HTS CCs such
as power cables, superconducting magnetic energy storages
(SMESs), fault current limiters (FCLs), transformers, and so
on [1], [3], [4]. In Japan, a national project for development
of materials & power application of CCs has been started
since 2008 [1], and we have been fabricating GdBCO CCs
for developing a 15 m long, 5 kA, 66 kV class 3-in-One HTS
model cable as a part of the project [5]. In order to promote
the development of power cables and its element technologies,
not only the stable and high-rate production of CCs but also
uniform superconducting properties with high critical current
are required. We have adopted a wide tape approach using
30 mm wide substrates to improve the production throughput,
and successfully obtained uniform in-plane grain alignment
across the tape width [6]. Our coated conductors are composed
of a textured clad-type metal substrate, a multi-buffer layer of
, a GdBCO
Manuscript received August 02, 2010; accepted October 31, 2010. Date of
publication November 29, 2010; date of current version May 27, 2011. This
work was supported in part by the New Energy and Industrial Technology De-
velopment Organization (NEDO) as the Project for Development of Materials
and Power Application of Coated Conductors, M-PACC.
The authors are with the Advanced Superconducting Department, Power
System Laboratories, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., 1-1-3, Shimaya,
Konohana-ku, Osaka 554-0024, Japan (e-mail: abiru-kenji@sei.co.jp).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2010.2091471
1051-8223/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
2941
superconducting layer, Ag and Cu protection layers. The
clad-type substrate, which consists of a thin bi-axially textured
Ni layer on a non-crystalline stainless tape, has less magnetism
and higher mechanical strength than typical Ni-alloy textured
substrates so called RABiTS (Rolling-assisted Bi-axially Tex-
tured Substrate), and its performances are almost comparable
to that of the Hastelloy substrate [2]. Consequently, coated
conductors using the clad substrate are suitable for AC ap-
plications, and also have advantage of its low AC loss. For
development of long GdBCO coated conductors with high and
uniform properties, improvements of deposition process for
the buffer layers and the superconducting layer are necessary
in addition to the high crystallinity and in-plane orientation of
the substrate itself.
In this report, we have newly installed a 300 W high power
excimer laser for the PLD equipment, and have investigated the
effect of the laser power improvement in values and pro-
duction rate of GdBCO films. In addition, we have improved
buffer layers aiming at enhancing the property by optimizing
the deposition condition using electron beam (EB) evaporation
method.
II. EXPERIMENTAL
The multi-buffer layers of were deposited
on 30 mm wide substrate by a reel to reel RF sputtering. The
first layer deposited on the substrate plays a role of a seed
layer. The second YSZ layer prevents Ni in the substrate from
the inter-diffusion and the reaction to superconducting layer,
which can degrades values. The third layer acts as
the relaxation of lattice-mismatch between the YSZ layer and
the superconducting layer, and showed around 4.6 degree of
in-plane grain alignment across the 30 mm tape width,
which was evaluated by a full width at half maximum (FWHM)
of X-ray scan for CeO(111) pole. The crystallinity of the
third layer was analyzed by X-ray diffraction of
, showing highly uniform crystallinity over the tape width
with the orientation ratio of
[6]. The GdBCO film was fabricated on the
buffer layers by a reel to reel PLD system using the 300 W Kr-F
excimer laser. The pulse energy and the repeti-
tion rate were 1 J and 300 Hz, respectively. The deposition was
repeated with the tape moving at a speed of 24 m/h under 10 Pa
of the partial pressure. After the deposition of the GdBCO
film, Ag layer was sputtered as a protection layer.
In this study, we prepared short samples to compare the
values of the GdBCO films deposited by using the 300 W laser
and a previous 200 W laser. In addition, we investigated the rela-
tionship between the tape moving speed in PLD process and the
property. values were measured by a four-probe method
2942
Fig. 1. The thickness distribution of GdBCO film on the 30 mm wide substrate,
film was deposited by PLD method with two different powers.
at 77 K with the criterion of 1 . Furthermore, we opti-
mized the deposition process for a seed layer by using EB evap-
oration method. The surface morphologies of buffer layers were
observed by a scanning electron microscope (SEM).
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Improvement of Deposition Speed of GdBCO Films by
Using a Newly Installed Laser for PLD Process
In the short sample experiment, we investigated the effect of
improving the laser power in manufacturing the thick GdBCO
film. Fig. 1 shows the thickness distribution of 5 layers GdBCO
films across the 30 mm wide tape. Dotted line and solid line
indicate the film thickness deposited by the previous laser and
the new laser, and t he repetition rates of each laser were 180
Hz and 300 Hz, respectively. In addition, the energy densities
of both lasers were 1 J, so the input laser powers were 180 W
for the previous laser and 300 W for the new laser. The total
deposition time was fixed to be equal between two samples. As
can be seen in Fig. 1, the thickness of the GdBCO film grown
by using the new laser (300 Hz) was 1.75 times thicker than the
film deposited by using the previous laser (180 Hz) on average.
This increased thickness was caused by the combinatorial effect
of laser power improvement and the increase of plume size. The
plume size was enlarged from around 4 cm to 10 cm in diameter
after installation of the new laser. Thus, the production rate for
thick GdBCO film was significantly improved by using the new
laser; moreover, this results show that the new PLD process en-
ables us to obtain the high value with increasing the thickness
of GdBCO films in a shorter deposition time than it used to be.
B. Influence of the Tape Moving Speed in PLD Process on
Properties
We investigated the relationship between the tape moving
speed in PLD process and the values. Fig. 2 shows depen-
dence on the thickness of GdBCO films deposited on the same
buffer layers at the tape moving speed of 12 m/h and 24m/h. The
thicknesses per a single deposition layer are 0.7 for 12 m/h
and 0.35 for 24 m/h, respectively. Each points in Fig. 2
were measured after 1to 4 passes deposition at 12 m/h and 2,
4, 6, 8 passes deposition at 24m/h. As can be seen in this graph,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, JUNE 2011
Fig. 2. Thickness dependence of the I values of GdBCO films with tape
moving speed of 12 m/h and 24 m/h. Each points in this graph were measured
after 1to 4 passes deposition at 12 m/h and 2, 4, 6, 8 passes deposition at 24m/h,
respectively.
Fig. 3. Surface SEM image of the previous seed layer deposited by RF
sputtering.
the GdBCO films deposited at 24m/h shows better proper-
ties than those grown at 12 m/h, and the value of 406 A/cm
were obtained for a 2.96 thick GdBCO film which was de-
posited 8 times at the tape speed of 24 m/h. Thus, it indicates that
higher values can be obtained by increasing the tape moving
speed. However, a thickness of GdBCO single layer decreases
with increasing the tape moving speed; therefore, multiple de-
positions are required to obtain thick GdBCO films with high
. One of the possible reasons of the improvement by in-
creasing the tape speed is the reduction of thermal history of the
substrate, and that prevents the property deterioration of buffer
layers. The second reason is that the GdBCO film grown at high
tape moving speed has a multiple layered structure including a
number of stacking faults, which would act as a flux pinning
center. That is, it is considered that these effects lead to the high
superconducting property.
C. Improvement of Surface Morphology for Buffer Layers
Fig. 3 shows a SEM image of a surface morphology of the
seed layer. As shown in this image, the surface of the
seed layer was very rough and a large number of small cracks
with the sub-micron scale were observed. That is, these prob-
lems were considered the factor of degrading the flatness for
buffer layers and the crystal orientation. In order to improve
ABIRU et al.: FABRICATION OF COATED CONDUCTORS FOR HTS CABLES
Fig. 4. Surface SEM image of the improved seed layer deposited by EB
evaporation.
Fig. 5. I values with various deposition processes as a function of the GdBCO
film thickness. Dotted line indicates the I property manufactured by the pre-
vious process with the laser frequency of 180 Hz for PLD method. Broken line
and solid line show the I property of GdBCO films deposited by using new
300 W laser.
the surface morphology of the seed layer, we focused on devel-
oping the deposition process. Then we succeeded to improve the
surface morphology by optimizing the deposition condition by
EB evaporation method. Fig. 4 shows a surface image of an im-
proved seed layer. The surface became significantly flat, and it
can be seen that numerous precipitates disappeared. A diagonal
line which has been seen in Fig. 4 indicates a grain boundary.
D. Progress of Long GdBCO Tape With High Properties
The values with various deposition processes as a function
of the GdBCO film thickness at 77 K were shown in Fig. 5.
A dotted line indicates the property of the GdBCO films
fabricated by the previous process with the laser frequency of
180 Hz and the tape carrying speed of 12 m/h for PLD method.
The property of this process tended to be saturated at around
250 A/cm. After the installation of the 300 W new laser for
thePLD system, values were improved to 406 A/cm due to the
effect of the increase in thickness of a GdBCO film at the same
deposition time and its multiple layered structure deposited at
second times higher tape moving speed of 24 m/h. A solid line
indicates the value of the GdBCO film fabricated on the im-
proved buffer layer. As can be seen in Fig. 5, property has
2943
Fig. 6. I distribution of a 22 m long GdBCO tape which was measured by a
reel to reel I measurement.
m thick GdBCO film.
Fig. 7. I distribution in width direction of a 2.8 
been greatly improved by applying the improved seed layer
made by EB evaporation, and achieved 497 A/cm-w at 77 K
for a short sample . The typical prop-
erties were around 250 A/cm when using the 1J, 180 Hz laser;
therefore, this result reveals that the value has almost doubled
by applying improved seed layer and using 1 J, 300 Hz laser for
PLD process.
With this improved process, we fabricated 30 mm wide,
20 m–40 m long GdBCO tapes. The GdBCO layers were
deposited 8 times at 24 m/h for each layer, that is, the actual
manufacturing speed for PLD process was 3 m/h for 30 mm
wide tapes. Fig. 6 shows longitudinal distribution of a 22 m
long 4 mm wide GdBCO tape on the improved buffer layer. The
Y-axises of the left side and the right side in the graph indicate
value for 4 mm wide tape and its 1 cm wide equivalent
value, respectively. The minimum and maximum of the
tape were 158 A and 190 A .
Consequently, the long GdBCO tape with the high value of
400 A/cm class was successfully fabricated.
Fig. 7 shows distribution in width direction of a 2.8
thick GdBCO film. A 30 mm wide short GdBCO tape was cut
into 6 tapes with 5 mm in width, and then we conducted the four-
probe measurement of each tapes. -axis as shown in Fig. 7
indicates 1 cm wide equivalent value. As can be seen in this
2944 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 21, NO. 3, JUNE 2011
figure, the center region of the 30 mm wide tape shows a better
values of more than 470 A/cm compared with those at the
edge region. This distribution was attributed to both the inho-
mogeneities of the surface temperature in width direction during
PLD process and the thickness distribution of GdBCO film. In
addition, the effect of local compositional variation in the films
should be considered. In order to uniform the distribution, the
optimization of the PLD process are currently underway.
IV. CONCLUSION
The values and the production rate of GdBCO films were
successfully improved by using the newly installed 300 W ex-
cimer laser for the PLD process and by developing the seed
layer using EB evaporation method. The maximum for a
short sample has achieved 497 A/cm at
77 K under the self-field, and then the average deposition rate of
GdBCO films has become 1.75 times higher than that using the
previous laser. By applying those approaches to the production
process for long GdBCO superconducting tapes, we succeeded
to fabricate a 22 m long 4 mm wide GdBCO tapes with the max-
imum of 190 A (475 A/cm for 1 cm wide tape). The improve-
ment of the stable manufacturing process for long GdBCO tapes
with the high value of over 400 A/cm is in progress.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank Yuh Shiohara, Teruo Izumi, Yutaka
Yamada, Yuichi Yamada, Noriko Chikumoto, Akira Ibi, Takato
Machi at the Superconductivity Research Laboratory, ISTEC,
for their support.
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