According to various implementations of the invention, high quality a-axis XBCO may be grown with low surface roughness. According to various implementations of the invention, low surface roughness may be obtained by: 1) adequate substrate preparation; 2) calibration of flux rates for constituent atoms; and/or 3) appropriate control of temperature during crystal growth. According to various implementations of the invention, a wafer comprises a smoothing layer of c-axis XBCO; a first conducting layer of a-axis XBCO formed on the smoothing layer; an insulating layer formed on the first conducting layer; and a second conducting layer of a-axis XBCO formed on the insulating layer, where, for a same surface roughness, a thickness of the smoothing layer and the first conducting layer combined is greater than a thickness of the first conducting layer without the smoothing layer.

A tape includes a plurality of superconducting elements, such as pixels, distributed along a longitudinal direction of the tape. The tape has a size along a first dimension, such as a thickness, which is at least 10 times smaller, than a size along a second dimension, such as a width, and where the size along the second dimension, such as the width, is at least 10 times smaller, than a size along a third dimension, such as a length. There is also presented a use of the tape, a method of manufacture of the tape, and a bolometer and/or a kinetic inductance detector comprising the tape.

Proposed are a thin film having an excellent crystal orientation property, a method of manufacturing the same, and a semiconductor device, a battery device, a superconducting wire, and a superconducting article including the thin film. The technical gist of the present disclosure includes a thin film having a single-crystal-level crystal orientation property, which is formed by depositing a polycrystalline second material on an upper portion of a substrate including a polycrystalline first material and which has a crystal orientation property satisfying the following Relational Expression 1 at a grain boundary, a method of manufacturing the same, and a semiconductor device, a battery device, a superconducting wire, and a superconducting article including the thin film.
0<FWHM.sub.23[Relational Expression 1] (FWHM.sub.2 is a full width at half maximum of a distribution curve of a misorientation angle at the grain boundary of the thin film).