Joint Characteristics of the YBCO Coated Conductor (CC) by Chemical Etching

The YBCO coated conductor (CC) is one of the most promising superconductors for various superconducting applications. Although it has many advantages, joints of the YBCO CC are inevitable because there are technical difficulties in lengthening the YBCO CC. In the joining process, it is important to reduce the joint resistance between the YBCO CCs in order to operate in a persistent current mode. Several approaches have been proposed to eliminate the stabilizer of the YBCO CC. Among them, this paper introduces a chemical etching method that can reduce the damaging influences to the superconductor layer in the YBCO CC compared with physical or thermal methods, which may degrade the features of the superconductor. This paper discusses the characteristics of joined YBCO CCs in terms of the resistance and critical currents of the joints from the V - I curve.