Material characterization of superconducting T′-Nd2CuO4 films synthesized by metal organic decomposition

Recently we have achieved superconductivity in T′-RE2CuO4 (RE = Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, and Gd), films by metal organic decomposition (MOD). In this article, we first report the cation off-stoichiometry effect, which aims at screening out the possibility of hole doping by cation deficiencies. We also investigated the structure and microstructure of superconducting T′-Nd2CuO4 films synthesized by MOD. This investigation aims at elucidating why MOD-grown Nd2CuO4 films become superconducting whereas our previous Nd2CuO4 films grown by molecular beam epitaxy were not superconducting.