System innovations for aerosol MOCVD of YBCO superconducting thin films

System innovations were developed for metallo-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) in order to achieve two main objectives: to fully characterize a novel feed system while and to demonstrate uniform, superconducting thin films over a 2 inch diameter.;The novel aerosol feed system was fully characterized and improved by performing solubility and carbon tests with different metallo-organic solvents and by thermally mapping the heating section. The gas flow profiles in the reactor chamber were modeled with a finite-element software package called Fluent. This enabled us to study different nozzles for improving the uniformity of the velocity near the substrate and the uniformity of the depositions.;Depositions were then performed to test the validity of the computer model and to determine correct molar feed ratios. The uniformity was measured with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) while the film compositions were analyzed with a X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy system (XPS). Once the correct feed compositions were determined, this ratio was used along with the feed nozzle designed to deposit uniform, superconducting thin films.