Ai. Erenburg et al., Structural investigations of superconducting multilayers consisting of semiconducting materials, LOW TEMP PH, 27(2), 2001, pp. 93-95
There are rather exotic semiconductor superlattices (SL) consisting of mono
chalcogenides of Pb, Sn, and rare-earth metals which exhibit superconductiv
ity at temperature as high as 6 K. Here we report the results of precision
x-ray diffractometry and TEM investigations as well as Auger spectroscopy d
ata obtained on some of the epitaxially grown superconducting semiconductor
SLs. It is established that the essential features of the SL structure det
ermining the appearance of superconductivity are the perfect single-crystal
linity of the samples and the presence of continuous dense grids of misfit
dislocations on the interfaces between two semiconductors. The segregation
of free Pb which was observed in some cases does not correlate, according t
o experimental data, with the appearance of superconductivity. (C) 2001 Ame
rican Institute of Physics.