Fabrication of cube-textured Ag-buffered Ni substrates by electro-epitaxial deposition

Cube-textured silver buffer layers have been fabricated using the easily scalable technique of electro-epitaxial deposition, Continuous 150 nm thick silver films with in-plane FWHM values of 8 degrees have been epitaxially deposited directly onto cube-textured Ni, Ni-10 wt% Cr and NiFe substrates using no intermediate buffer layer and no post-deposition heat treatment. Studies of the thermal stability of the coatings show that the texture is stable up to 900 degreesC and that continuous films are retained up to 800 degreesC. We believe that electro-epitaxial deposition offers a promising method for the fabrication of low-cost, long length biaxially textured substrates for superconducting tape.