Abstract
The in situ fabrication of YBCO (YBa2Cu3Oy)/MgO/Au epitaxial planar tunnel junctions with a thin MgO barrier utilizing an electron-beam coevaporation technique is reported. The thickness of the MgO barrier is 3–12 nm and the tunnel resistance shows a strong dependence on barrier thickness. The fabricated tunnel junctions are highly reproducible and controllable. The observed tunnel characteristics contain the gap opening at about 20 mV and the anomaly around zero bias. The tunnel characteristics using the degraded films are also reported.