Bi-axially textured Ni tapes fabricated by a cold rolling process of nickel powder compacts

Powder metallurgy has been widely used to make high purity metals and alloys. We applied the powder metallurgy route to the fabrication of the bi-axially textured Ni and Ni-W alloy tapes for YBCO coated conductors. The Ni and Ni-W powder compacts were cold-rolled into tapes. The Ni powder used in this study was 5 /spl mu/m in size and 99.99% in purity. To densify them, the Ni and Ni-W rods were sintered at 1100 /spl deg/C for 6 h in 96% Ar-4% H/sub 2/ atmosphere, and cold-rolled into thin tapes of 80-100 /spl mu/m thickness. Heat-treatment condition for the development of cube texture were established for the tapes. The out-of plane and in-plane texture of the Ni and Ni-W tapes were about 8/spl deg/. In this paper, we discuss the effect of the processing variables on the texture development of the Ni and Ni-W tapes.