Microstructural aspects of inclined substrate deposition templates for coated conductors

Inclined substrate deposition (ISD) has been developed as an efficient and economical method to produce biaxially textured templates useful in the fabrication of YBa2Cu3Ox (YBCO) coated conductors. In this work we have focused on an architecture that consists of an ISD MgO layer capped with a thin homoeptiaxial layer of MgO and a single perovskite (SrRuO3) buffer layer. The single perovskite buffer layer promotes improved texture and eliminates the necessity for deposition of additional layers that reduce the overall efficiency of the ISD approach. With a terminal surface consisting of a perovskite, epitaxial growth of YBCO leads to an inclined orientation. Compared to ISD-based conductors prepared using a CeO2 buffer, this architecture typically exhibits better transport critical current densities that can be correlated with an improvement in texture attributed to the perovskite buffer.