Fabrication and Transport Properties for Cleaved Thin Film BSCCO Single Crystals

We have fabricated truly single-crystal BSCCO thin films of the quality of traveling-solvent-floating-zone single crystals by using a double side cleaving technique. The thicknesses of the cleaved thin films thus obtained ranges from 20 nm to 100 nm. These films are found to adsorb or desorb oxygen very easily at a relatively low annealing temperature of 200 to 300degC. When a cleaved film is annealed in Argon at 300degC for 10 min, it changes to an insulator without any trace of superconducting transition. When this film is subsequently annealed in oxygen at 300degC , it exhibits a sharp superconducting transition at about 90 K. When the film is subjected to these process repeatedly, the film changes from an insulator to a superconductor quite reversibly. We have measured in-plane resistivity and the Hall coefficient systematically in a wide doping range for this thin film BSCCO single crystals.