Effects of surface miscuts on the epitaxy of YBa2Cu3O7-δ and NdBa2Cu3O7-γ on SrTiO3(001) -: art. no. 115429

We report on the effects of small miscuts of the (001) SrTiO3 (STO) substrate surface, on the microstructure of epitaxial films of YBa2Cu3O7-delta and NdBa2Cu3O7-gamma (NBCO). The most noticeable result is that, by growing NBCO films on miscut STO substrates with the steps intentionally oriented along a direction within 15degrees of [110], one reliably obtains NBCO films with a single [110] twinning variant (the [1 (1) over bar0] is completely eliminated), which is a precious characteristic for all applications involving flux flow.