Comparing Thickness and Doping-Induced Effects on the Normal States of Infinite-Layer Electron-Doped Cuprates: Is There Anything to Learn?

Abstract

We grew Sr1-xLaxCuO2 thin films and SrCuO2/Sr0.9La0.1CuO2/SrCuO2 trilayers by reflection high-energy diffraction-calibrated layer-by-layer molecular beam epitaxy, to study their electrical transport properties as a function of the doping and thickness of the central Sr0.9La0.1CuO2 layer. For the trilayer samples, as already observed in underdoped SLCO films, the electrical resistivity versus temperature curves as a function of the central layer thickness show, for thicknesses thinner than 20 unit cells, sudden upturns in the low temperature range with the possibility for identifying, in the normal state, the T* and a T** temperatures, respectively, separating high-temperature linear behavior and low-temperature quadratic dependence. By plotting the T* and T** values as a function of TConset for both the thin films and the trilayers, the data fall on the same curves. This result suggests that, for the investigated trilayers, the superconducting critical temperature is the important parameter able to describe the normal state properties and that, in the limit of very thin central layers, such properties are mainly influenced by the modification of the energy band structure and not by interface-related disorder.