Investigation of the epitaxy of thin YBa2Cu3O7-delta films

Abstract The degree of epitaxy of thin sputtered and laser ablated films have been investigated by Raman spectroscopy. Using the selection rules for Raman scattering for the different phonons in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7−δ the superconducting films on SrTiO 3 and MgO are found to be epitaxially grown with the c -axis perpendicular to the substrate. On ZrO 2 the films also grow with their c -axis perpendicular to the substrate, but with randomly oriented a / b -directions in the plane of the film.