Development of textured Au layer on ni substrate for YBCO coated conductors

Much effort has been made to develop new metallic buffers to explore the possibility of designing YBCO coated conductors (CC's) with a simple architecture. We selected An because of its small lattice mismatch to Ni and chemical novelty, and plated it on a biaxially textured Ni substrate by the electroless-plating method. The texture of Au/Ni template was evaluated by X-ray pole-figure and orientation distribution function (ODF) analysis. The surface roughness and grain boundary morphology were characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM). We fabricated the cube textured Au/Ni template for the CC and evaluated its texture formation and microstructural evolution. Texture analysis indicated that the An layer was epitaxially deposited on the Ni substrate and formed a strong cube texture when the processing variables were optimized. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) was 8.4 degrees for out-of-plane and 9.98 degrees for in-plane texture when the plating time was 30 min. In addition, the root-mean-square (RMS) and the depth of the grain boundary for the An layer were 14.6 nm and 160 angstrom, respectively, which are significantly smaller than the corresponding values for the Ni substrate (27.0 mn and 800 angstrom), indicating that the electroless-plated An layer had a relatively smooth surface and effectively mollified grain grooves.