Due to their interesting properties, high temperature superconductors, especially REBa2Cu3O7-x (REBCO, RE=Y, Rare Earth) superconductors, are key materials for energy efficient technologies. One of the most studied REBCO material since its discovery, is YBCO, although other rare earths have risen interest, due to their potentially improved properties. Moreover, the Chemical Solution Deposition (CSD) methodology has been proven to be a promising low cost and scalable approach for coated conductor manufacturing process using reel-to-reel deposition techniques such as slot-die coating, dip coating and inkjet printing. Nevertheless, the slow growth rate of the standard CSD method for REBCO films growth (~1 nm/s) is a great limitation for the industrialization process. This limitation can be overcome by the recently developed CSD compatible method, the Transient Liquid Assisted growth – TLAG-CSD. In this method the epitaxial growth is controlled by the fast RE ions diffusion dissolved in a Ba-Cu-O transient liquid, leading to much faster growth rates (≈ 100-1000 nm/s) [1,2]. Being TLAG-CSD is a new methodology, many aspects need to be explored. One of these is the effect of different RE elements or RE mixers on the epitaxial growth kinetics, which implies a large time-consuming exploration of many process parameters. An appealing and practical approach are the new experimental techniques that are based on combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput experimentation (HTE). The objective of these techniques is to create large amounts of data by fabricating and characterizing material compositions and processing parameters in parallel, thus, increasing the speed and efficiency of the development process.
In this work we have used a drop-on-demand inkjet printing to prepare combinatorial samples [3] to achieve compositional gradients. In particular, we will here show results of YxYb1-xBCO gradient samples obtained by printing selected patterns of two metalorganic inks (Y-Ba-Cu-O and Yb-Ba-Cu-O) by drop mixing, which afterwards are grown in particular conditions and characterized in parallel by means of XRD, SEM and EDX. We demonstrate that the versatility of drop-on-demand inkjet printing with independent multinozzle control is suitable for HTE of compositions and process conditions.
[1] Soler et al, Nat Commun 11, 344 (2020)
[2] S. Rasi et al, Adv Sci 2203834 (2022)
[3] A. Queralto, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 13, 9101 (2021)
Keywords: inkjet printing, superconductor inks, combinatorial chemistry, Transient Liquid Assisted growth – TLAG