Structure property relationships in a nanoparticle-free SmBCO coated conductor

We examine the temperature, field and field angle dependence of the critical current of a SmBa 2 Cu 3 O y coated conductor produced by reactive co-evaporation. A transmission electron microscopy based microstructural analysis shows the film contains extended c -axis defects, stacking faults, and two different species of inclined defects. By applying a maximum entropy decomposition of the field angle dependent critical current I c ( θ ) datasets we are able to identify the individual contributions of these defects to the critical current even though they do not produce distinct peaks but rather an anisotropy in I c ( θ ). We are able to confirm the structure property relationships by determining the matching fields where each of the individual defect contributions are a maximum and showing that these are consistent with the observed microstructure. For a critical current component having a maximum magnitude at an intermediate temperature we propose a model of thermally activated depinning to explain the behaviour.