Growth and superconductivity of REBCO bulk processed by a seed/buffer layer/precursor construction

The buffer layer has been used, for the first time, in the cold-seeding melt-growth (MG) process for REBCO superconductor bulks. In this modified method, a mini pellet was inserted between the seed and the bulk precursor. Notably, the chemical contamination, from the seed material (either REBCO films or SmBCO/NdBCO crystals), was mostly absorbed by the mini pellet. Thus a uniformly high Tc REBCO bulk was readily gained. Secondly, the higher limits of the maximum processing temperature (Tmax) were evidently raised, which is promisingly beneficial for broadening the growth window and overcoming the self-nucleation in the growth of large-sized bulk. In short, the success of this work is that it protects the bulk from seed-induced contamination, and breaks the limit of Tmax caused by the intrinsic properties of the seed material. By means of this simple seed/buffer layer/precursor construction, we successfully fabricated a large single grain of GdBCO bulk superconductor with a diameter of 56 mm.