Friday, 2B-06, 9:30-9:40

Development of High Rate Y₂O₃ Seed Layer by Reactive Sputter Deposition for Second Generation High Temperature Superconducting Wire

Senthil N. Sambandam

Xuming Xiong¹, Andrei Rar¹, Kenneth P. Lenseth¹ and Venkat Selvamanickam²

¹ SuperPower Inc., 450 Duane Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12304
² Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204
*Presenting author: Ph 518 346 1414 X3011, Fax: 518 346 6080, E-mail ssambandam@superpower-inc.com

Second generation (2G) high temperature superconducting (HTS) wire has been demonstrated to have potential importance in energy industries, medical diagnostics, and military applications. One of the factors controlling its commercial success is cost-effective product development and manufacturing. As a consequence, high throughput, cost-effective and high-quality processing is necessary. This work presents the development of a high-rate Yttria seed layer deposition. Yttria has been routinely used as the nucleation seed layer that enables the biaxial texture of MgO and has been previously manufactured using ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD). In order to increase the throughput and cost reduction, we develop a new process of reactive magnetron sputtering to produce yttria deposition. Yttria coatings can be manufactured 10 times faster than the existing process. Good feedback control was developed to achieve reliable manufacturing at high-rate deposition with quality coatings. To optimize the processes for yielding required thicknesses, the deposited coatings were characterized by spectroscopic ellipsometry using a simple three-layer model. The effective feedback control employed in this process enables tailoring of the oxygen concentration in the seed layer.

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