Ultra-high magnetic field applications such as compact fusion are driving the demand for REBCO coated conductors. World-wide demand for REBCO tapes far outstrips supply which is limited by the huge expense of establishing REBCO tape manufacturing facilities. One approach to alleviate this bottleneck as well as to significantly reduce the cost (in $/kA-m) of REBCO tapes is to utilize less conductor for the same kA-m requirement using high performance tapes. We have developed an Advanced Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (A-MOCVD) technology that yields REBCO tapes with 4x critical current than commercial REBCO tapes in a magnetic field of 20 T. The A-MOCVD technology has been successfully scaled up to 50-meter lengths with critical current 3.3x that of commercial tapes at 20 K, 20 T. The high-performance A-MOCVD tapes have also been used to fabricate round REBCO wires – STAR® wires – of 1.5 to 2.5 mm in diameter with excellent isotropic, high-field performance, for use in complex magnets such as those for particle accelerators.

Keywords: superconductor, magnetic field, critical current, MOCVD