Epitaxy of heterostructures of superconducting oxides

The crystal engineering of oxide is the one of the merging trends in the field of material research for the last ten years. The main techniques of oxide thin film deposition are presented and discussed together with various methods of in-situ analysis, which allow the real time control of the growing interface. in the case of high temperature superconductor, the choice of the substrate is one of the limiting steps to obtain high qualify hetero-structures. The properties of the various substrates and oxide buffer layers used in the growth of YBa2Cu3O7 based structures are presented and the consequences on the epitaxial stress and the strain relaxation are discussed.