AVS 52nd International Symposium
    Thin Films Monday Sessions
       Session TF-MoP

Paper TF-MoP26
Fabrication of Long Lengths of Flexible High Temperature Superconductor Thin Film Tapes for Electric Power Applications

Monday, October 31, 2005, 5:00 pm, Room Exhibit Hall C&D

Session: Aspects of Thin Films Poster Session
Presenter: V. Selvamanickam, SuperPower
Authors: V. Selvamanickam, SuperPower
Y. Chen, SuperPower
X. Xiong, SuperPower
Y. Li, SuperPower
Y. Xie, SuperPower
Y. Qiao, SuperPower
J. Reeves, SuperPower
P. Hou, SuperPower
M. Gardner, SuperPower
T. Salagaj, SuperPower
K. Lenseth, SuperPower
Correspondent: Click to Email
High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) have immense potential in electric power applications such as cables, motors, generators, and transformers. The zero-resistance property of HTS can be beneficially used to transmit up to 10 times more power in cables, and reduce the size and weight of rotating machinery and transformers by half. SuperPower is scaling up the so-called second-generation HTS conductors which are based on thin film tapes of epitaxially grown superconducting films. Flexible metal substrates such as Hastelloy are used and highly biaxially-textured oxide buffer templates are deposited by ion beam assisted deposition and magnetron sputtering. The buffer layers are comprised of a multilayer stack of oxides, each layer comprising of about 10 to 100 nm. Y-Ba-Cu-O superconducting films are then deposited on the buffer stack in thickness of 1 to few microns by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Overlayers of silver and copper films are used to complete the conductor. SuperPower has established Pilot-scale facilities for producing long lengths of high-performance second-generation HTS thin film tape conductors. We have scaled up the processes to 100 m lengths with critical currents exceeding 100 A at 77 K. In this presentation, we will discuss the recent advances in scale up several thin film process technologies, associated equipment and process control techniques to fabricate second-generation HTS thin film tapes for electric power applications. Prototype electric power devices fabricated with these HTS thin film conductors will also be presented.