High Functional Thin Films Fabricated by Pulsed Laser Deposition

REBCO coated conductors (RE: rare earth elements) have recently drawn great attention since they are known to possess stronger flux pinning centers in high magnetic fields compared with YBCO coated conductors. In this study, $GdBa_2Cu_3O_{7-d}(GdBCO)$ was selected to investigate the influence of the distance between target and substrate and substrate temperature on the superconducting properties of GdBCO films on the $SrTiO_3(100)$ substrate. Samples were fabricated by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) with a Nd:YAG laser (355nm). Under a given oxygen pressure of 800mTorr, we changed the distance between target and substrate from 5.5cm to 7.0cm and the substrate temperature from $750^{\circ}C\;to\;850^{\circ}C$. The crystallinity and texture of GdBCO films were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the surface morphology was observed by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Tc and Jc values were measured by the four point probe method. High quality GdBCO films with Tc of 89.7K and Jc over $1MA/cm^2$ at 77 K in self field were successfully fabricated by optimizing processing parameters. The detailed processing conditions, microstructure and superconducting properties will be presented for a discussion.