SBIR-STTR Award

Commercial high temperature superconducting materials need two key techniques namely, large area deposition and large area patterning. Most commonly used processing techniques such as pulsed laser deposition and laser etching are limited to a small scale deposition and patterning of HTS films. By combining e-beam multilayer evaporation and rapid thermal annealing we quickly make large area films (up to 5 inches). Furthermore we have invented a novel method of patterning HTS films by a Si-YBCuO intermixing technique. This invention permits us to use well established silicon technology for making both micron-sized structures and large scale features without chemical contamination to the HTS surface. This unique patterning technique works for silicon substrates which opens the door for making hybrid devices with Si integrated circuits. We plan to further study the material properties of the Si-YBCuO intermixed system to improve the technique. We are developing mask sets for a demonstration project which will involve either switching or high frequency antennas.