Experiments using continuous fabrication of IBAD-MgO based coated conductors

The reel-to-reel coated conductor facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory enable electropolishing, ion-beam assist deposited (IBAD) MgO texturing, buffer layer deposition, REBaCuO pulsed laser deposition and position dependent critical current measurements, all in a continuous fashion. These systems allow development of long-length coated conductors as well as high-throughput experimentation by linear combinatorial design. We discuss how we utilize the deposition systems to obtain thickness profiles and study the properties of the films as a function of thickness. In particular we demonstrate that texture improves with thickness of epitaxial layers, whether homoepitaxial MgO or heteroepitaxial YBCO.