Homogeneous superconducting gap in DBCO synthesized by oxide molecular beam epitaxy

TL;DR

This study synthesizes DBCO thin films via oxide molecular beam epitaxy and uses in situ ARPES and SI-STM to reveal that the surface differs from the bulk, with a homogeneous superconducting gap indicating distinct origins of pseudogap and superconductivity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that surface measurements may not reflect bulk properties in DBCO and provides insights into the homogeneous nature of the superconducting gap.

Findings

Surface DBCO is heavily underdoped compared to the bulk.

Superconducting gap is very homogeneous across the surface.

Pseudogap varies significantly over nanometer scales.

Abstract

Much of what is known about high-temperature cuprate superconductors stems from studies based on two surface analytical tools, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy (SI-STM). A question of general interest is whether and when the surface properties probed by ARPES and SI-STM are representative of the intrinsic properties of bulk materials. We find this question is prominent in thin films of a rarely studied cuprate DBCO. We synthesize DBCO films by oxide molecular beam epitaxy and study them by in situ ARPES and SI-STM. Both ARPES and SI-STM show that the surface DBCO layer is different from the bulk of the film. It is heavily underdoped, while the doping level in the bulk is close to optimal doping evidenced by bulk-sensitive mutual inductance measurements. ARPES shows the typical electronic structure of a heavily underdoped CuO2 plane and two sets of one-dimensional bands originating from the CuO chains with one of them gapped. SI-STM reveals two different energy scales in the local density of states, with one corresponding to the superconductivity and the other one to the pseudogap. While the pseudogap shows large variations over the length scale of a few nanometers, the superconducting gap is very homogeneous. This indicates that the pseudogap and superconductivity are of different origins.