High Jc YBCO thin films and multilayers grown by chemical solution deposition

Chemical solution deposition (CSD) has emerged as a very competitive technique to obtain superconducting films of high quality. However, there is still few knowledge about how underlying microstructure can affect the performances of the YBa₂Cu₃O_7-δ (YBCO) films. Here we will summarize our recent progress in this subject. We have grown YBCO thin films by the so called trifluoroacetate route on top of buffer layers also grown by CSD. By modifying the growth conditions of SrTiO₃ and BaZrO₃ buffer layers we have investigated the influence of surface roughness and grain size. The role of lattice parameter mismatch has been studied by producing multibuffered architectures such as SrTiO₃/BaZrO₃/LAO. It has been proved that YBCO thin films with critical currents in excess of 1 MA/cm² at 77 K in self field can be achieved, thus demonstrating the abilities of the CSD technique.