High-Temperature Superconductors

Vacuum Coating Equipment & Technologies

Mod­ern sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion (2G) HTS tape pro­duc­tion typ­i­cally be­gins with an In­conel sub­strate strip just 50–100 µm thick. A mul­ti­layer tem­plate is de­posited onto the strip to cre­ate the re­quired crys­tal­lo­graphic align­ment, fol­lowed by a su­per­con­duct­ing rare-earth bar­ium cop­per ox­ide (RE­BCO) layer. Com­monly used vac­uum de­po­si­tion tech­nolo­gies in­clude ion-beam-as­sisted de­po­si­tion (IBAD) and sput­ter­ing for the tem­plate lay­ers, as well as pulsed laser de­po­si­tion (PLD), metal-or­ganic chem­i­cal va­por de­po­si­tion (MOCVD), and elec­tron-beam phys­i­cal va­por de­po­si­tion (EB-PVD) for the RE­BCO layer.

As a lead­ing sup­plier of large-scale in­dus­trial metal-strip coat­ing sys­tems, VON AR­DENNE com­bines ex­ten­sive PVD process ex­per­tise, proven vac­uum equip­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and a strong track record in scal­ing ad­vanced de­po­si­tion tech­nolo­gies. This makes us an ideal part­ner for HTS tape man­u­fac­tur­ers tran­si­tion­ing from pi­lot pro­duc­tion to in­dus­trial-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing—a ca­pa­bil­ity al­ready demon­strated in mul­ti­ple scale-up pro­jects within the HTS in­dus­try.