Professor Schuller will study the properties of thin superconducting films to better understand the superconducting mechanisms and to provide for improvement of these properties. The experiments will use the sputtering and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) techniques to grow polycrystalline, textured, and epitaxial films of high temperature oxide superconductors. The composition, compositional uniformity, and structure will be determined using a number of surface techniques including ion milling, Auger, x-ray photoelectron, and ion scattering spectroscopies. Physical properties such as magnetotransport, superconducting temperature, critical currents, and magnetic field response on isolated high temperature superconducting films and films in proximity with other materials will be examined. Special care will be taken in the preparation of the materials with regard to choice of substrate, post-preparation heat and oxygen treatment.
