The role of texturing and thickness of oxide buffer layers in the superconducting properties of Fe(Se,Te) Coated Conductors

In this paper the roles of texturing and thickness of different buffer layers employed in the fabrication of Fe(Se,Te) coated conductors are studied. Fe(Se,Te) thin films were deposited either on rolling assisted biaxially textured substrates substrates with highly textured CeO2 buffer layer and on HASTELLOY® C276 substrates with a randomly oriented native oxide grown through different oxidizing processes. It was found that the buffer layer has to be both thick enough to block Ni interdiffusion from the metallic tape to the Fe(Se,Te) overlayer, and textured enough to ensure good in-plane alignment of the superconducting film, and consequently good critical current densities (Jc). The best results in terms of critical temperature (Tc) and critical current were obtained using a highly textured 350 nm thick CeO2 buffer layer, but a fairly good Jc of 1.2 104 A cm−2 in self field at 5 K was also obtained using an HASTELLOY® C276 substrate with a 400 nm thick randomly oriented native oxide. The obtained results indicate that the superconducting properties of the Fe(Se,Te) coated conductors are determined by a trade-off between degree of texturing of the substrate and inhibition of Nickel interdiffusion.