A method to access the electro-mechanical properties of superconducting thin film under uniaxial compression

Superconducting thin films are widely used in superconducting quantum interferometers,microwave devices,etc.The electrical performance of a superconducting thin film is often affected by structural deformation or stress.Based on four-point bending of a Cu-Be beam,we constructed a device that could apply uniaxial,uniform.compressive strain to a superconducting thin film at both room temperature and the temperature of liquid nitrogen.The thin film was placed into a slot carved in the Cu-Be beam.We optimized the size of this slot via numerical simulation.Our results indicated that the slot width was optimal when it was same as the width of the Cu-Be beam.Notably,the sample bended hardly after machining two slits along width direction on both sides of the slot.A YBa2Cu3O7-δSrTiO3(YBCO-STO)film was used as an example.It was loadedby the aforementioned device to determine its electrical characteristics as functions of the uniaxial-uniform-compressive strain.The optimized design allowed the sample to be compressed to a larger strain without breaking it.