Excellent thermal stability of superconducting properties in YBa2Cu3O7 films irradiated by pulsed excimer lasers

Abstract

We have investigated the microstructure and superconducting properties of YBa2Cu3O7 films irradiated by nanosecond pulsed excimer lasers. The superconducting YBa2Cu3O7 thin films were deposited in situ on (100) LaAlO3 substrates using the pulsed laser evaporation technique. The virgin unirradiated YBa2Cu3O7 films exhibited excellent superconducting properties with Tco (temperature for zero resistance) of 90 K and critical current densities Jc (at 77 K and zero magnetic fields) of approximately 5.0 × 106 A/cm2. The films were further irradiated by a pulsed excimer XeCl laser (λ=308 nm, τ=45×10−9 s) with energy density varying from 30 to 300 mJ/cm2. Excellent thermal stability was observed for YBa2Cu3O7 films on LaAlO3 substrate for laser irradiation at all energy densities between 30 and 300 mJ/cm2, with no deterioration in the Tco values (90±0.3 K). An improvement in the Jc of the films was observed at low-energy density irradiation, however, for energy densities above the melt threshold the Jc values decreased sharply. The Raman measurements for laser irradiated films showed improvement in the crystallinity of the film with stronger Raman peaks at 140 and 340 cm−1, thus correlating the improvement in Jc to better crystallinity of the films.