SCANNING PROBE NANOSTRUCTURING OF YBA2CU3O7 - A CORROSION INDUCED ABRASION

Nanostructuring experiments were performed on a YBa2Cu3O7 thin film su rface with an atomic force microscope (AFM) with a conductive tip. Mea surements of the local conductivity with the AFM tip show that corrosi on towards a nonconducting surface occurs on a timescale of hours unde r ambient conditions. The corroded surface can easily be abraded, wher eas the clean YBa2Cu3O7 surface is comparably resistive against mechan ical forces. The corrosion is promoted by an electric current at posit ive sample bias. Thus it can be concluded that the nanostructuring pro cess performed in former experiments with the scanning tunneling micro scope consists of two steps: corrosion and succeeding abrasion. (C) 19 97 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(97)05052-3].