Transport characterization of GdBa₂Cu₃O _7-δ coated conductors deposited by the in-plume PLD reel-to-reel technique

In-plume pulsed laser deposition (PLD) process allows to produce coated conductors (CC) with high deposition rates together with superior in-field properties. We investigated systematically on temperature, magnetic field and field angular the transport properties of different GdBA₂Cu ₃O_7-δ coated conductor produced by an in-plume PLD multi-turn reel-to-reel process. Thereby, high self field critical current densities (Jc) (4.3 × 10¹⁰ A/m² at 77 K) and excellent in field behavior were observed for the best sample. The angular resolved (Jc) measurements show a very extensive structure which varies with temperature and applied magnetic field. In the low field region, an asymmetric behavior on the direction of the current to the magnetic field (field and current were always perpendicular to each other) was observed. This behavior is related to the direction where the vortices are pushed, to the substrate or to the surface, and indicates an additional pinning mechanism for magnetic fields oriented near to the a/b-planes. The primarily reason for this effect seems to be the superconducting to buffer layer transition.