Venkat Selvamanickam, University of Houston, Houston, TX
Tremendous progress has been made in the past two decades in the development and roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing of thin film RE-Ba-Cu-O (REBCO, RE=rare-earth) superconductor tapes world-wide. Based on a unique biaxially-textured substrate/buffer architecture and epitaxial film growth, REBCO tapes have been demonstrated with high critical current densities over a wide range of temperatures – 4.2K to 77K. Using CVD, PVD and solution coating techniques, many companies worldwide are producing thin film REBCO tapes in lengths of several hundred meters with uniformly good critical currents. Additionally, through the introduction of Artificial Pinning Centers (APC) in form of nanoscale defects, the critical current densities of these tapes have been increased over 10-fold, resulting in pinning force levels 100 times that of the most-commonly used superconductor, Nb-Ti. The major challenges in largescale commercialization of thin film superconductor tapes are in their high cost and limited manufacturing throughput. Status, challenges and opportunities in R2R manufacturing of thin film superconductor tapes will be discussed in this presentation