I. Introduction
High temperature superconductors (HTS) discovered in 1986, are moving into the second generation (2G) of development in a span of twenty years. The first generation is based on bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide (BSCCO), and the second generation is based on yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO), which has the potential to be less expensive than copper and perform better than BSCCO under magnetic fields. HTS wires are so efficient that they can carry up to 140 times the power of conventional copper wires of the same geometry. The potential uses for HTS wires in electric power applications include underground transmission cables, oil-free transformers, superconducting magnetic-energy storage (SMES) units, fault-current limiters, high-efficiency motors, and compact generators. Both Rolling-Assisted Biaxially Textured Substrates (RABiTS) and Ion-Beam Assisted Deposition (IBAD) approaches have emerged as leading techniques for the fabrication of 2G HTS wires in 100 meter lengths with superior performance [1]–[5]. The current RABiTS architecture used by American Superconductor consists of a starting template of biaxially textured Ni-W (5 at.%) with a seed layer of 75-nm , a barrier layer of 75-nm YSZ, and a cap layer of 75-nm [5]. In this architecture, all the buffers have been deposited by reactive sputtering. To reduce the initial investment cost for buying 2G pilot-scale production equipment, it is essential to either reduce the number of layers or to replace some of the sputtered buffer layers with solution deposited buffers. The Metal-Organic Deposition (MOD) process offers a significant potential cost advantage over physical vapor deposition (PVD) processes. Solution coating is amenable to complex oxides and the materials utilization is almost 100%. A slot-die coating process has been chosen to scale up solution buffer layers. However, for optimizing the MOD film growth and process conditions of short samples, spin coating was used.