Congratulations Dr. Juri Banchewski, new SUMAN graduate!

Doctor Juri Banchewski from the Superconducting Materials and Large Scale Nanostructures (SUMAN) group at ICMAB defended his PhD thesis entitled “Transient Liquid Assisted Growth of YBCO Superconducting Films: Growth Kinetics, Physical Properties and Vortex Pinning” on Thursday, 17 December 2020. Congratulations!

Abstract: High temperature superconductors (HTS) have been driving research and development programs for about three decades now and are on the verge of entering large scale utilization in the form of Coated Conductors (CCs), a robust and flexible tape architecture that enables textured growth of the rather brittle material class. A remaining bottleneck for widespread CC implementation is the high cost/performance ratio, essentially controlled by the complex and decelerating step of HTS layer growth.

In this thesis, we challenge the throughput and cost constraints of conventional growth methods through development of a novel growth technique that combines Chemical Solution Deposition (CSD), an inherently low-cost precursor deposition approach, with a high growth rate, non-equilibrium growth scheme that allows the formation of a transient liquid phase prior to crystallization of the final product phase: Transient Liquid-Assisted Growth via CSD (TLAG-CSD). We have successfully implemented the new process to fabricate YBa₂Cu₃O_7–δ (YBCO) superconducting films, a cuprate-based HTS material with unmatched current carrying performance.

His PhD Thesis was supervised by SUMAN group leader, researcher Prof. Teresa Puig, and was in the framework of the Physics PhD Programme of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). The PhD Committee was formed by Prof. Bernhard Holzapfel, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany (President), Dr. Joffre Gutierrez, ICMAB-CSIC (Secretary) and Prof. Salvador Ferrer Fabregas, Alba Synchrotron (Vocal).

Thank you Juri and good luck in your future endeavours!