Fabrication of in-plane aligned YBCO films on polycrystalline Ni tapes buffered with surface-oxidized NiO layers

Strongly in-plane aligned, c-axis oriented YBCO films were successfully grown on polycrystalline nickel tapes buffered with (100)-oriented NiO layers. The in-plane and out-of-plane alignments of the NiO layer were achieved by a surface-oxidation epitaxy (SOE) technique using a {100}<001> cube-textured nickel tape. The in-plane textures of NiO layers fabricated so far with the full width half maximum (FWHM) values of 11-13 degrees ale sufficient for the epitaxial growth of high-J(c) YBCO films. Pulsed laser deposited YBCO layers on the NiO/Ni tapes were not only c-axis oriented with respect to the tape surface, but also strongly in-plane aligned. The YBCO films on NiO/Ni tapes have a zero resistance T-c=87K and J(c)=10(4)-10(5)A/cm(2) at 77K.