Nano-patterning of cuprate superconductors by masked He${}^{+}$ ion irradiation: 3-dimensional profiles of the local critical temperature

Abstract

Irradiation of cuprate high-$T_c$ superconductors with light ions of moderate energy creates point defects that lead to a reduction or full suppression of the critical temperature. By shaping the ion flux with a stencil mask, nanostructures for emerging superconducting electronics can be fabricated. The 3-dimensional shape of such defect landscapes is examined, based on calculations of full collision cascades and atom displacements. A relation between the calculated defect density and experimental values of the critical temperature $T_c$ in thin YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{7-\delta }$ films is etablished that allows to determine the distribution of local $T_c$'s and its 3-dimensional visualization. The results confirm that, using 75 keV He${}^{+}$ ion irradiation and a stencil mask, well-defined patterns of non-superconducting material in the superconducting matrix can be produced with low blurring.

References in corpus (1)

• Hysteretic vortex matching effects in high-$T_c$ superconductors with nanoscale periodic pinning landscapes fabricated by He ion beam projection technique

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Temporal evolution of electric transport properties of YBCO Josephson junctions produced by focused Helium ion beam irradiation
• Vortex matching at 6 T in YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{7-\delta }$ thin films by imprinting a 20 nm-periodic pinning array with a focused helium ion beam
• Angular magnetic-field dependence of vortex matching in pinning lattices fabricated by focused or masked helium ion beam irradiation of superconducting YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{7-\delta }$ thin films