A Review of Coated Conductor Development

The developments of coated conductor technology have been reviewed. It is shown that the critical current density of high-Tcwires can be greatly enhanced by using three-fold approaches; grain alignment, grain boundary doping, and optimization of the grain architecture. Major advances have been made in the last 16 years mainly in three aspects: substrates, buffer layers and the YBCO layer. Cost is still the main concern for scale up, especially for the approach through vapor depositions, such as the PLD method. TFA-MOD or other CSD methods may be the trend to overcome cost and speed consideration during the scale up. However, high reliability and reproducibility will be the new focus for these techniques. Ni-alloy tapes seem to have advantages over pure Ni in terms of mechanical strength and oxidation resistance. Depositing a pure Ni layer on top of Ni-based alloys (such as Ni-Cr and Ni-W alloys) solves the problem of low strength of Ni and poor texture of Ni alloys. The RABiTS and IBAD are the two robust approaches for the texture generation. But the buffer materials and architectures being investigated remain unclear, though CeO2/YSZ/CeO2 and MgO are commonly used buffer layers for RABiTS and IBAD respectively. For the case where a buffer layer is unavoidable, a non-vacuum process would be suitable for low cost and scale up. However, none of the buffer layer fabrication processes through CSD has been demonstrated results good enough for long length coated conductor applications. While, a high Jc superconducting layer can be produced by TFA-MOD, which brings a bright future for coated conductors. Clearly, there are still many scientific and technological barriers to be overcome before any long length of high Jc coated conductor be produced commercially. But theoretical analyses and technological progress show the potential for the practical application of coated conductor wires in the near future.