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

Pulsed-laser deposition has been utilized to grow metastable and artificially-layered copper oxide thin-film materials. Single-crystal thin films of Ca1 − xSrxCuO2, 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 Ca1 − xSrxCuO2 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) SrTiO3 substrate, and virtually no impurity phases present. In addition, superlattice structures, consisting of SrCuO2 and (Sr,Ca)CuO2 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.