ARTIFICIALLY LAYERED FILMS OF CUBA2(CA1-XSRX)(N-1)CUNOY GROWN USING PULSED-LASER DEPOSITION

We have shown that the pulsed laser deposition technique (PLD) can be successfully used to grow artificially layered films of the CuBa2(Ca1- xSrx)(n-1)CunOy compound using only two targets having nominal composi tion BaCuOy and (Ca1-xSrx)CuOy, respectively. n was varied between 2 a nd 5. We have demonstrated, by a kinematic analysis of the x-ray diffr action spectra that the average random discrete thickness fluctuations which affect both the BaCuOy and (Ca1-xSrx)CuOy layers are much small er than one atomic layer. Such features are confirmed by the appearanc e of sharp peaks even for the n=2 artificially layered structure where only one (Ca1-xSrx)CuOy cell is deposited in the stacking sequence. T hese results show that truly new structures can be obtained by a layer by layer deposition technique with a low interfacial disorder and giv e strong support to the idea of synthesizing new artificial high T-c s tructures by the PLD technique. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics .