Reactive Co-Evaporation of YBCO for Coated Conductors

We describe methods for depositing high temperature superconducting films on textured metal tapes by reactive co-evaporation (RCE). We discuss how RCE can be used to deposit on moving tape in a continuous fashion in a Garching-style process. Results are presented on films deposited by RCE at Los Alamos on IBAD-MgO textured tapes. The performance achieved, attaining over 500A/cm-width in self-field at 75.5 K, is competitive with the best results obtained by other processes for coated conductors. Tape production throughput is critical for the economics of the process and high deposition rates achieved in RCE are attractive for this. We present a detailed cost analysis model for HTS deposition using an RCE Garching process. The results indicate that HTS deposition can cost $<$5/kA{\cdot}m$ in a scaled up manufacturing environment.