O (S) trilayer heterostructure.*

Epitaxial growth and characterization of cuprate heterostructures are of the utmost importance for developing many superconductor electronic devices such as Josephson junctions, three-terminal devices, and circuit applications such as interconnects, ground planes, and multichip modules. The heterostructures made with high critical temperature (T_c) superconductor YBa₂Cu₃O_7-x (YBCO) have applications for fundamental science research, such as studies of mechanisms for high-T_c superconductivity, 2D superconductivity, and measurement of the correlation energy. These heterostructures typically have the S/D/S, S/N/S, S/I/S geometries (S=superconductor, D=dielectric, N=normal metal, I=insulator), with the middle layer as the isolation layer, normal metal, or the insulator. Using the pulsed laser-based thin film deposition technique (PLD), we fabricated (110)-oriented YBa₂Cu₃O₇ (YBCO) / PrBa₂(Cu_0.8Ga_0.2)₃O₇ (PBCGO) bi-layer and YBCO/PBCGO/YBCO tri-layer heterostructures with (110)-oriented PBCGO insulator (I) as thin as ~1nm. Afterward, we performed x-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, electrical transport, Raman, and Auger electron spectroscopy measurements on these heterostructures. Here, we present our experimental results from various x-ray measurements, including grazing incident x-ray diffraction, rocking curve measurement, x-ray reflectivity measurement, pole figures, and reciprocal space mapping. We also present electrical transport, Raman scattering, and Auger electron spectroscopy results on the heterostructures.