Development of cube-textured Ni–W alloy substrates for YBCO-coated conductor Kyu Tae Kim a , Jun Hyung Lim a , Jung Ho Kim a , Jinho Joo a, * , Wansoo Nah b , Bong Ki Ji c , Byung-Hyuk Jun c , Chan-Joong Kim c , Gye-Won Hong d a The School of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, SungKyunKwan University, 300 Chunchun-dong, Jangan-gu, Suwon, Kyunggi 440-746, South Korea b The School of Information and Communication Engineering, SungKyunKwan University, Suwon, Kyunggi 440-746, Republic of Korea c Nuclear Material Development Team, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Daejon 305-600, South Korea d Department of Electronic Engineering, Korea Polytechnic University, Seoul 429-793, South Korea Received 29 October 2003; accepted 24 February 2004 Available online 1 June 2004 Abstract We fabricated pure Ni and Ni–W alloy substrates for YBCO-coated conductor applications and evaluated the effect of W in Ni on texture, grain size, grain boundary and surface morphology, and hardness of the substrates. Pure Ni, Ni– 2at.%W, and Ni–5at.%W alloy substrates were prepared by plasma arc melting, cold rolling, and recrystallization heat treatment at various temperatures (700–1300 °C). Substrate texture was evaluated by pole-figure and microstructure and surface morphology were investigated by optical and atomic force microscopy (AFM). We observed that the Ni–W alloy substrates had stronger cube texture that was maintained at higher annealing temperatures than seen for the pure Ni substrate: Full-width at half-maximum of in-plane texture was 13.40° for the Ni substrate and 4.42–5.57° for the Ni–W substrate annealed at 1000 °C. In addition, the Ni–W substrate had smaller grain size, less thermal grooving, and higher hardness, compared to those of the pure Ni substrate, indicating that the presence of W in Ni effectively restricts grain growth and enhances thermal stability by strengthening the grain boundary in the Ni substrate. Ó 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 74.72.)h; 74.76.Bz; 75.20.En Keywords: Grain growth; Ni substrate; Pole-figure; YBCO-coated conductor 1. Introduction YBCO-coated conductors have received great attention due to their high critical current density (J c ) and intrinsic high irreversibility of magnetic field. Various processing methods have been con- ducted to achieve long length, excellent J c , * Corresponding author. Tel.: +82-31-290-7385; fax: +82-31- 290-7371. E-mail address: jinho@skku.ac.kr (J. Joo). 0921-4534/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.physc.2004.02.204 Physica C 412–414 (2004) 859–863 www.elsevier.com/locate/physc