High Performance 2G-HTS Wire Using a Novel MOCVD System

We present the development of a novel Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) system aimed at producing high performance 2G-HTS wire in the ARPA-E GRIDS program on Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage. A susceptor-free MOCVD system with non contact optical temperature monitoring and highly laminar parallel flow in a confined volume has been developed to address the issues of a-axis grain formation and low precursor conversion efficiency in conventional MOCVD designs. For the first time, near-1000 A/12 mm critical current tapes have been achieved by MOCVD in single pass deposition of 1.8-μm REBCO (RE = rare earth) on IBAD-MgO/LMO substrates. In addition, completely a-axis free films have been grown to thickness up to 4 μm, while the precursor conversion efficiency has been increased by 40%. The system and REBCO film characteristics, as well as further development aims will be presented.