Development of high-Ic processing for low cost YBCO coated conductors by multi-turn reel-to-reel crystallization large furnace for TFA-MOD process

Trifluoroacetates (TFA) –metal organic deposition (MOD) derived YBCO coated conductors are expected for many applications mainly due to cost-efficiency. High Ic and production rate are required for cost reduction in terms of $/Am. Improvement of Ic performance and production rate has been studied in this work, focusing on the conversion process of TFA-MOD. YBCO precursor films with desired thickness were prepared by using the multi-turn reel-to-reel (RTR) -system of dip-coating and calcination. The precursor films were heat treated under different conditions including the interim annealing. Crystallization process was performed on the interim annealed samples by using a multi-turn RTR system. The conversion furnace was modified so that improved conditions such as higher gas flow rate, lower total pressure can be used, which improved the production rate in crystallization process to 15 m/h by accelerating YBCO growth rate. Adopting the interim annealing, Ic property increased about 30% compared with that prepared without the interim annealing. X-ray θ-2θ diffraction analysis showed that; the peak intensities of YBCO (005) in interim annealed samples were 1.5 times stronger compared with those prepared without the interim annealing. The interim annealing affected the crystallinity and microstructure, resulting in high Ic. Then, the improved process for crystallization was applied to long tapes fabrication. A 205 m-long YBCO coated conductors fabricated at 15 m/h with interim annealing showed high and uniform Ic performance throughout the tape; Ic(min.)=372 A/cm-w@77 K, s.f., standard deviation = 15.2 A (3.7%). Uniformity along transverse direction was also analyzed by striating a 54 m long tape (199.5 A/5 mm-widths) into 5 filaments and, the Ic value of each filament (1 mm-width) was confirmed to be uniform; 24.3-32.9 A.