High frequency response of thick REBCO coated conductors in the framework of the FCC study

Metal Propionate Solutions for High-Throughput Liquid-Assisted Manufacturing of Superconducting REBa2Cu3O7-δ (RE = Y, Gd, Sm, and Yb) Films

The cost-effective synthesis of a series of metal propionate powders (copper, yttrium, barium, samarium, gadolinium, and ytterbium) is developed through single chemical reactions resulting in five novel crystalline forms. These complexes are valuable precursors for the preparation of epitaxial REBa2Cu3O7-δ (REBCO) superconducting films (here, RE = Y, Sm, Gd, and Yb) through the innovative transient liquid-assisted growth (TLAG) process based on chemical solution deposition (CSD). TLAG-CSD shows impressive results with YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO), obtaining critical current densities of 2.6 MA/cm2 (77 K) on 500 nm films at unprecedented growth rates (50-2000 nm/s), boosting unprecedented high-throughput industrial production. With a cardinal concern on designing the pyrolysis toward optimal nanocrystalline films for TLAG, an analysis of the thermal behavior of the synthesized precursors is essential. Decomposition pathways for each metal propionate are established, and compatibility with TLAG-CSD is corroborated. Metal-organic solutions for these REBCO systems are successfully prepared, and their rheological properties and thermal behavior are analyzed. This work demonstrates homogeneous nanocrystalline films through propionate-based REBCO precursor solutions, including several rare-earth ions, which display exemplary chemical and microstructural characteristics crucial for TLAG, and provides a base for a wide variety of CSD-based functional oxides.

Design and Test of a New Dielectric-Loaded Resonator for the Accurate Characterization of Conductive and Dielectric Materials

The spread of additive manufacturing techniques in the prototyping and realization of high-frequency applications renewed the interest in the characterization of the electromagnetic properties of both dielectric and conductive materials, as well as the design of new versatile measurement techniques. In this framework, a new configuration of a dielectric-loaded resonator is presented. Its optimization, realization, and use are presented. A measurement repeatability of about one order of magnitude lower than the commonly found values (10-3 on the Q-factor and 15×10-6 on the resonance frequency, given in terms of the relative standard deviations of repeated measurements) was reached thanks to the design of a closed resonator in which the samples can be loaded without disassembling the whole measurement fixture. The uncertainty levels, the ease of use, and the versatility of the realized system make its use of potential interest in numerous scenarios.

Defining inkjet printing conditions of superconducting cuprate films through machine learning

The design and optimization of new processing approaches for the development of rare earth cuprate (REBCO) high temperature superconductors is required to increase their cost-effective fabrication and promote market implementation. The exploration of a broad range of parameters enabled by these methods is the ideal scenario for a new set of high-throughput experimentation (HTE) and data-driven tools based on machine learning (ML) algorithms that are envisaged to speed up this optimization in a low-cost and efficient manner compatible with industrialization. In this work, we developed a data-driven methodology that allows us to analyze and optimize the inkjet printing (IJP) deposition process of REBCO precursor solutions. A dataset containing 231 samples was used to build ML models. Linear and tree-based (Random Forest, AdaBoost and Gradient Boosting) regression algorithms were compared, reaching performances above 87%. Model interpretation using Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) revealed the most important variables for each study. We could determine that to ensure homogeneous CSD films of 1 micron thickness without cracks after the pyrolysis, we need average drop volumes of 190-210 pl, and no. of drops between 5000 and 6000, delivering a total volume deposited close to 1 μl.