Influence of deposition parameters on the biaxial alignment of YSZ buffer layers using an unbalanced magnetron

The development of a cost-effective deposition technique for depositing biaxially aligned buffer layers on polycrystalline and amorphous substrates would be a significant progress in developing YBa 2Cu 3O 7− x coated conductor. With this goal, biaxially aligned thin films of yttria stabilised zirconia (YSZ) have been deposited on several amorphous and polycrystalline substrates using a specifically modified sputter magnetron. The use of this unbalanced magnetron to deposit YSZ on tilted substrates resulted in highly textured layers on glass, metal and polymer substrates, the best in-plane full width at half maximum being 13° in a layer deposited at 43.3 nm/min. The same technique was also demonstrated on a moving metal tape, however with worse results. For the scaling up of this quite simple technique, a higher efficiency, an even higher deposition speed and no degradation of in-plane texture when depositing on moving substrates has to be established. Therefore some more fundamental aspects of the process were investigated.