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Microstructure of Grain Boundary Junctions in Bicrystal High-Tc Superconductor SQUIDs and its Relation with the Device Noise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

Y. Huang ,
L. Lee ,
M. Teepe ,
K. L. Merkle  and
K. Char
Y. Huang
Affiliation:
Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, 60439
L. Lee
Affiliation:
Conductus. Inc. 969 Maude Ave., Sunnyvale, CA, 94086.
M. Teepe
Affiliation:
Conductus. Inc. 969 Maude Ave., Sunnyvale, CA, 94086.
K. L. Merkle
Affiliation:
Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, 60439
K. Char
Affiliation:
Conductus. Inc. 969 Maude Ave., Sunnyvale, CA, 94086.
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Extract

Superconductor Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs), because of their extreme sensitivity to magnetic fields and radiation, have found important applications in biomagnetism, non-destructive evaluation and geophysics. One problem in the application of high-Tc SQUIDs is their noise performance. Recently, considerable progress has been made in reducing the noise. To understand the underlying mechanism, it is important to identify the microstructural origin of the junction noise.

In this work actual SQUIDs of good and poor noise performance are studied and compared by TEM. The devices were made by epitaxially growing YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO) films using laser ablation on 24° SrTiO3 bi-crystal substrates. The TEM samples were prepared by polishing and ion milling. The TEM observation was performed on a JEOL EM-4000EXII and a Hitachi H-9000 microscope.

Observation shows that the YBCO films and the grain boundary junctions (GB J) in the low-noise devices are in good quality. The microstructure of the films and the boundaries in the films are shown in fig. 1 and 2.

Type
Atomic Structure and Mechanisms at Interfaces in Materials
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 3 , Issue S2: Proceedings: Microscopy & Microanalysis '97, Microscopy Society of America 55th Annual Meeting, Microbeam Analysis Society 31st Annual Meeting, Histochemical Society 48th Annual Meeting, Cleveland, Ohio, August 10-14, 1997 , August 1997 , pp. 667 - 668
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 1997

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References

1. Ludwig, F.et al., Appl. Supercond., 3 (1995) 383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Lee, L.et al., Appl. Phys. Lett., 66 (1995) 3059.Google Scholar

3. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under contract #DMR 91-20000 (YH) and the U. S. Department of Energy under contract #W-31-109-ENG-38 (KLM).Google Scholar