Artificially-layered and metastable thin-film materials development utilizing pulsed-laser deposition

Abstract

Pulsed-laser deposition has been utilized to grow metastable and artificially-layered copper oxide thin-film materials. Single-crystal thin films of Ca 1 − x Sr x CuO 2, the ‘infinite layer’ parent compound for the high temperature superconductors, have been grown over the composition range 0.15 ≤ x ≤ 1.0 utilizing a single-target co-deposition growth scheme. These Ca 1 − x Sr x CuO 2 thin films are very high-quality single crystals of the tetragonal, infinite layer phase with extremely narrow diffraction peaks, complete in-plane crystalline alignment with the (100) SrTiO 3 substrate, and virtually no impurity phases present. In addition, superlattice structures, consisting of SrCuO 2 and (Sr,Ca)CuO 2 layers in the tetragonal, ‘infinite layer’ crystal structure, have been grown by pulsed-laser deposition. These results greatly enhance the possibility of developing new, artificially-layered high temperature superconducting phases via pulsed-laser deposition.