ATOMIC LAYER-BY-LAYER EPITAXY OF CUPRATE SUPERCONDUCTORS

A technique for atomic layer-by-layer epitaxy of cuprate superconductors and other complex oxides has been developed at Varian. The samples are engineered by stacking molecular layers of different compounds to assemble multilayers and superlattices, by adding or omitting atomic monolayers to create novel compounds, and by doping within specified atomic monolayers. Apart from manufacturing trilayer Josephson junctions with I(c)R(n)>5 mV, this technique enables one to address fundamental issues such as the dimensionality of HTSC state, existence of long-range proximity effects, occurrence of resonant tunneling etc., as well as to synthesize novel metastable HTSC compounds.