TEM and electron backscatter diffraction analysis (EBSD) on superconducting nanowires

Abstract

Electrospun, superconducting nanowires are characterized concerning the grain orientation, their texture and the respective grain boundary misorientations by means of electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis. The individual nanowires in such electrospun, nonwoven nanowire networks of Bi2Sr2CaCu2Ox (Bi-2212) are polycrystalline, have average diameters up to 250 nm and their grains are in the 20-50 nm range. This requires a high spatial resolution for the analysis in the scanning electron microscope. However, the small diameter of the nanowires enables the application of the newly developed transmission EBSD (t-EBSD) technique without the preparation of TEM slices. Here, we present TEM images of individual nanowires and several EBSD mappings on Bi-2212 nanowires and compare their microstructure to those of filaments of the first generation tapes.