Christine Elizabeth Platt

Low‐loss substrate for epitaxial growth of high‐temperature superconductor thin films

A perovskite‐like single‐crystal substrate material has been investigated that simultaneously permits epitaxial growth of 1‐2‐3 superconductor films and possesses desirable rf properties of low dielectric constant and loss tangent. The lattice constant of 3.792 A provides a lattice match to within 1% of the a axis of 1‐2‐3. Sputtered films of erbium‐barium‐copper‐oxide have been produced on (100) LaAlO3 substrates that exhibit sharp resistive transitions at 90 K (ΔT=1K), bulk superconductivity as determined by ac susceptibility measurements, and nearly single‐crystal growth as evidenced by x‐ray diffraction and high‐resolution scanning electron microscopy. The high‐frequency dielectric properties of LaAlO3 were experimentally investigated at several temperatures. The low‐frequency dielectric constant was measured to be 15 and the microwave loss tangent ranged from 6×10−4 at room temperature to 5×10−6 at 4 K.

Multisource-sputtered ErBa2Cu3O7−x films on single-crystal and buffered crystalline substrates

High-quality superconducting films of erbium-barium-copper-oxide have been produced in a multisource sputtering system on a variety of substrates, including buffered sapphire and silicon wafers as well as various single-crystal materials. Fine-grained polycrystalline films with narrow (<4 K) resistive transitions have been grown on a number of different substrates. The use of erbium in the 12–3 compound leads to improved film morphology and to more forgiving conditions for establishing of the superconducting phase. Sputtered neutral mass spectroscopy (SNMS) yields useful information about the compositional profile of the films.