Enhanced anomalous scattering by superconducting nanofilms vs T at O:K, Cu:L2,3, Ba:M4,5

TL;DR

This paper investigates enhanced anomalous scattering in superconducting YBa2Cu3O7-d films, analyzing how diffraction enhancement reveals oxygen composition and structural stability across the superconducting transition.

Contribution

It introduces a crystallographic weight analysis method to distinguish anomalous scattering effects from other signals in superconducting nanofilms.

Findings

Diffraction enhancement correlates with oxygen content changes.

c0 remains constant across the superconducting transition.

Enhanced scattering provides insights into film composition and structure.

Abstract

Enhanced (001) anomalous scattering by YBa2Cu3O7-d 50 nm films on SrTiO3 substrates with and without a grain boundary versus temperature is interpreted using crystallographic weights to distinguish it from total electron yield and fluorescence spectra. The power of diffraction enhancement is to ascertain the film oxygen composition from the changes in the c-axis, c0 as the film surface is scanned across the grain boundary, and to determine that c0 is constant versus temperature across the superconducting phase transition.