Factors affecting the superconductivity in the process of depositing Nd1.85Ce0.15CuO4−δ by the pulsed electron deposition technique

Abstract

On SrTiO 3 single crystal substrate, by using the pulsed electron deposition technique, the high-quality electron doped Nd 1.85 Ce 0.15 CuO 4−δ superconducting film was successfully fabricated. After careful study on the R-T curves of the obtained samples deposited with different substrate temperatures, thicknesses, annealing methods and pulse frequencies, the effects of them on the superconductivity of the films were found, and the reasons were also analyzed. Additionally, by using the same model of the pulsed laser deposition technique, the relation between the target-to-substrate distance and the deposition pressure was drawn out as a quantitative one. pulsed electron deposition, Nd 1.85 Ce 0.15 CuO 4−δ film, superconductivityPulsed electron deposition technique, a novel film growth method developed in recent years, has the similar principle as the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique but more advantages. An important advantage is that the electrons produced by a channel spark system penetrate into the target without being confined by the target material's optical properties, and therefore a wider range of materials can be fabricated. Moreover, the cheap cost is another attractive feature. It was applied to growing YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7−x (YBCO) on SrTiO 3 (STO) substrate first by Jiang et al. in 1994 [1] , and the superconducting film with the zero-resistance (ρ = 0) temperature T C0 ~88 K was obtained. In the following years, several kinds of films with excellent electrical or optical properties, such as SiO 2 and SnO 2 [2][3][4][5] , were also successfully fabricated. The measurement results of the transport