Tunneling Microscopy of Superconductors and Tunneling Barriers

Download or read book Tunneling Microscopy of Superconductors and Tunneling Barriers written by Alex De Lozanne and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thin films of high temperature superconductors were made by sputtering and by co-evaporation. The former method produced thin films of YBaCuO which were completely superconducting at 82 K with 6 K transition widths. A new method was developed at the University of Texas which produced films of YBaCuO on strontium titanate that were superconducting at 84 K. This method minimizes the process temperature and produces films which are superconducting without the need for annealing. The films were also grown on silicon and sapphire substrates with zero resistance of 68 K or better. A low temperature scanning tunneling microscope was used to study the superconducting properties of these and other samples. High quality spectroscopic data was obtained which yields a value of approximately 11 for the ratio of the superconducting gap to the transition temperature. Keywords: High temperature superconductivity; Thin films; Tunneling.