Growth of epitaxial multilayers consisting of alternately stacked superconducting YBa2Cu3O7-δ and colossal magnetoresistive La1-xPbxMnO3 layers

Epitaxial multilayers comprising of superconducting YBa2Cu3O7-delta (YBCO) and colossal magnetoresistive La1-xPbxMnO3 (LPMO) layers have been fabricated on (1 0 0) SrTiO3 substrates using pulsed-laser ablation technique. For this purpose, we have optimized the growth parameters, namely substrate temperature and oxygen pressure, for the epitaxial growth of La1-xPbxMnO3 films, so that both YBCO and LPMO layers could be in situ grown under identical conditions. The structural, morphological and magneto transport properties of LPMO films are found to be greatly influenced by the growth temperature. An increase in c-lattice parameter and decrease in insulator-to-metal transition temperature with increasing growth temperature have been observed, which are found to be a consequence of the loss in Pb content at elevated temperatures. The grown YBCO/LPMO multilayers exhibited both superconducting as well as magnetoresistive properties. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.