Epitaxial growth and superconducting properties of thin-film PdFe/VN and VN/PdFe bilayers on MgO(001) substrates

Single-layer vanadium nitride (VN) and bilayer Pd(0.96)Fe(0.04)/VN and VN/Pd(0.92)Fe(0.08) thin-film heterostructures for possible spintronics applications were synthesized on (001)-oriented single-crystalline magnesium oxide (MgO) substrates utilizing a four-chamber ultrahigh vacuum deposition and analysis system. The VN layers were reactively magnetron sputtered from a metallic vanadium target in Ar/N(2) plasma, while the Pd(1−)(x)Fe(x) layers were deposited by co-evaporation of metallic Pd and Fe pellets from calibrated effusion cells in a molecular beam epitaxy chamber. The VN stoichiometry and Pd(1−)(x)Fe(x) composition were controlled by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. In situ low-energy electron diffraction and ex situ X-ray diffraction show that the 30 nm thick single-layer VN as well as the double-layer VN(30 nm)/Pd(0.92)Fe(0.08)(12 nm) and Pd(0.96)Fe(0.04)(20 nm)/VN(30 nm) structures have grown cube-on-cube epitaxially. Electric resistance measurements demonstrate a metallic-type temperature dependence for the VN film with a small residual resistivity of 9 μΩ·cm at 10 K, indicating high purity and structural quality of the film. The transition to the superconducting state was observed at 7.7 K for the VN film, at 7.2 K for the Pd(0.96)Fe(0.04)/VN structure and at 6.1 K for the VN/Pd(0.92)Fe(0.08) structure with the critical temperature decreasing due to the proximity effect. Contrary to expectations, all transitions were very sharp with the width ranging from 25 mK for the VN film to 50 mK for the VN/Pd(0.92)Fe(0.08) structure. We propose epitaxial single-crystalline thin films of VN and heteroepitaxial Pd(1−)(x)Fe(x)/VN and VN/Pd(1−)(x)Fe(x) (x ≤ 0.08) structures grown on MgO(001) as the materials of a choice for the improvement of superconducting magnetic random access memory characteristics.