Abstract
A sharp cube textured Ni overlayer on Cu substrates has been developed for the manufacturing of long-length RABiTS-based coated conductor tapes. Using a low-cost, non-vacuum and easily scalable technique of electroplating, smooth. crack-free and continuous Ni overlayers were deposited on cube textured Cu substrates without any intermediate layers. In addition, sharp cube textured Sm-doped CeO2 buffer layers have been grown on the Ni-plated Cu substrates using pulsed laser deposition and found to exhibit in-plane and out-of-plane FWHM values of 6.50degrees and 5.25degrees, respectively. This electroplating process promises an efficient route for manufacturing Cu-based HTS coated conductors.