BaCuO2/SrCuO2 superlattices by pulsed-laser deposition: Growth and structural characterization

We have shown that the pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) technique can be successfully used to grow artificial superlattices based on the infinite-layer compounds BaCu02 and SrCuO2. We have demonstrated, by a kinematic analysis of the X-ray diffraction spectra, that the random discrete thickness fluctuations affect both the BaCuO2 and the SrCuO2 layers approximately in the same way. Furthermore, such kind of interfacial disorder resulted to be surprisingly low for this system. Such feature is confirmed by the appearance of sharp superstructure peaks even for the (BaCu02)2/(SrCu02)l superlattice, where only one SrCu02 unit cell is deposited in the stacking sequence. These results show that truly new structures can be obtained by a layer-by-layer deposition technique with a low interfacial disorder and give strong support to the idea of synthesizing new artificial high-T c structures by the PLD technique.