Superconducting Lines Fabricated from Epitaxial Y-Ba-Cu-O Films

Abstract

High-T c superconducting lines as narrow as 0.8 µm, have been fabricated from Y-Ba-Cu-O films. The films were epitaxially grown on MgO (100) substrates heated at 740°C, by rf magnetron sputtering. The lines were patterned using focused ion-beam lithography and ion-beam etching. The resulting superconducting lines, 1.3 µm wide and 2 mm long, showed a zero resistance temperature of 81 K and a critical current density of 1.5×104 A/cm2 at 77.3 K with smooth surfaces.

High resolution patterning of high Tcsuperconducting thin films

“…Even smaller structures have been made with dry etching, in particular ion beam etching (IBE) (Enokihara et al 1988 andTsuge et al 1988). Maskless techniques like focussed ion beam lithography (Harriot et al 1989) and pulsed laser evaporation (Zhang et al 1989) have produced sub-micron strips.…”