Grain Growth Simulation of [001] Textured YBCO Films Grown on (001) Substrates with Large Lattice Misfit: Prediction of Misorientations of the Remaining Boundaries

Abstract

AbstractWe employed a Monte Carlo technique to simulate the effect of (1) the anisotropic grain boundary energy in the film and (2) the large misfit between the film and substrate on the grain growth of [001] textured Yba2Cu3Ov7-x (YBCO) films. In terms of remaining grain boundaries of certain misorientations, the simulation results concur with the experimental observation of preferred grain orientations of YBCO on various substrates, such as (001) MgO and (001) Yttria stabilized Zirconia (YSZ). Three factors were identified to influence the grain growth of these [001] tilt boundaries in the simulation and could help to elucidate the origin of special misorientations observed experimentally. These are (1) the depth of local minima in boundary energy vs. misorientation curve, (2) the number of possible combinations of coincidence epitaxy (CE) orientations contributing to the exact misorientation for each of the high angle but low energy (HABLE) boundaries, and (3) the number of possible combinations of coincidence epitaxy CE orientations within the angular ranges near each of the HABLE boundaries.