Epitaxial growth of YBa₂Cu₃O₇/CeO₂/YSZ thin films on silicon-on-insulator substrates

Abstract

A silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate is a compliant type of substrate because it is possible to grow a wide variety of materials on it with a small lattice mismatch and a small thermal expansion mismatch. It is quite promising in microelectronics applications, such as hybrid semiconductor/superconductor devices. In this paper, a SOI substrate has been used to grow a superconducting thin film. Using in situ pulsed laser deposition, epitaxial YBaCuO (>4000 Å) thin films have been grown on SOI (100) substrates via a multiple buffer layer of CeO2 and yttrium-stabilized zirconium oxide (YSZ). X-ray diffraction analyses have shown that both the YBaCuO films and the multiple buffer layers are c-axis orientated. We have obtained YBa2Cu3O7/CeO2/YSZ multilayers with a critical temperature, Tc, of 88 K and a critical current density, Jc, of 2 × 106 A cm−2 at 77 K.