High-T/sub c/ coated conductors-performance of meter-long YBCO/IBAD flexible tapes

One meter long tapes based on 50-100 /spl mu/m thick by 1 cm wide nickel alloy substrates have been coated in a continuous process with a textured yttria-stabilized zirconia layer by ion beam-assisted deposition, followed by a 1-2 /spl mu/m thick layer of YBCO by pulsed laser deposition. The best result to date is a tape with a critical current (I/sub c/) at 75 K of 96 A over an 87 cm measurement length. The overall critical current density and engineering current density are 1 MA/cm/sup 2/ and 10 kA/cm/sup 2/, respectively. Using a special probe, individual I-V curves were generated for each centimeter of tape length in order to investigate longitudinal uniformity of the transport properties: the highest and lowest I/sub c/ values fall within a range of /spl plusmn/25%.