Evaporation--the way to commercial coated conductor fabrication

The evaporation technique is one of the most promising candidates for an industrial scale production of coated conductors. It allows high volume deposition rates, is robust and reliable--advantages which directly translate into cost savings. A reel to reel prototype deposition system has been developed and successfully tested. Continuous deposition on meter long RABiTS and inclined substrate deposition tape samples yields critical current densities up to 0.3-0.4 MA/cm2 from end to end. On short samples deposition rates up to 5 nm/s have been realized and hence due to the large accessible deposition area tape production speeds in excess of 100 μm cm2/min appear to be feasible in the near future