Growth of cube-textured nickel substrates for HTS coated conductors

A critical step in the successful fabrication of coated conductors on metal substrates is to produce cube texture substrates using the RABiTS approach. Nickel has been used as a substrate for high-current coated YBa2Cu3Ox superconductors due to the relative ease in achieving sharp cube texture as well as chemical compatibility. High purity nickel (99.995%) samples were rolled to large deformation and annealed in 5% H-2-95% Ar atmosphere at 700degreesC-1100degreesC for various times. The cube texture was promoted by recrystallization after cold rolling. The effects of deformation reduction per pass; amount of deformation, and annealing temperature and time on the recrystallization process were investigated using XRD and EBSD techniques. These parameters have been optimized to obtain the cube texture {100}<001>. The sharpest cube texture (>80% of grains within 7degrees and >97% within 10 cube textured) was obtained for nickel cold rolled by 2% reduction per pass and annealed at 1000degreesC for 90 minutes.