Revealing The Mechanisms of Ultrafast Transient Liquid Assisted Growth of REBCO-Type Superconducting Thin Films by Synchrotron Radiation In-Situ X-Ray Diffraction

The novel ultrafast Transient Liquid Assisted Growth (TLAG) method [1-3] is an outstanding opportunity to fabricate low-cost, high throughput epitaxial superconducting YBa₂Cu₃O₇ (YBCO) films using scalable methods. However, the fast kinetics of this non-equilibrium process require in-situ techniques to understand its growth mechanism and determine key process parameters. A specialized instrumentation was developed to allow investigating the dynamics of TLAG process based on in-situ monitoring of the precursors reaction, intermediate phases evolution and final products of the YBCO growth by in-situ XRD at synchrotron radiation sources at acquisition times from 2 - 100 ms/frame. This set-up allows to control the key parameters of growth of the YBCO by TLAG, this includes the temperature, partial oxygen pressure, total pressure and the heating rate, as well as to perform very fast changes in total and partial oxygen pressures. Additionally, Mass Spectrometry measures the gaseous products of the reaction. Furthermore, the resistance is measured in-situ throughout all the growth process providing valuable information on the growth rate of the superconducting phase. The installation is placed in a movable rack that allows its use in different synchrotron facilities and all the equipment is time synchronized. All of the acquired data during the combined experiments is advancing our understanding of the non-equilibrium growth mechanism and pinpoints the direction to the optimal conditions for ultrafast epitaxial growth of YBCO reaching up to 1000 nm/s.<br/>The novel ultrafast Transient Liquid Assisted Growth (TLAG) method [1-3] is an outstanding opportunity to fabricate low-cost, high throughput epitaxial superconducting YBa₂Cu₃O₇ (YBCO) films using scalable methods. However, the fast kinetics of this non-equilibrium process require in-situ techniques to understand its growth mechanism and determine key process parameters. A specialized instrumentation was developed to allow investigating the dynamics of TLAG process based on in-situ monitoring of the precursors reaction, intermediate phases evolution and final products of the YBCO growth by in-situ XRD at synchrotron radiation sources at acquisition times from 2 - 100 ms/frame. This set-up allows to control the key parameters of growth of the YBCO by TLAG, this includes the temperature, partial oxygen pressure, total pressure and the heating rate, as well as to perform very fast changes in total and partial oxygen pressures. Additionally, Mass Spectrometry measures the gaseous products of the reaction. Furthermore, the resistance is measured in-situ throughout all the growth process providing valuable information on the growth rate of the superconducting phase. The installation is placed in a movable rack that allows its use in different synchrotron facilities and all the equipment is time synchronized. All of the acquired data during the combined experiments is advancing our understanding of the non-equilibrium growth mechanism and pinpoints the direction to the optimal conditions for ultrafast epitaxial growth of YBCO reaching up to 1000 nm/s.