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 YBa₂Cu₃O_x 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% H₂ - 95% Ar atmosphere at 700 °C - 1100 °C 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 7° and > 97% within 10° cube textured) was obtained for nickel cold rolled by 2% reduction per pass and annealed at 1000 °C for 90 minutes.