estimated to a value of about 15 from the R( T ) curve which is close to the highest values reported for borocarbide thin films so far (Fig. 5(a)). Thus, the temperature dependence of the upper critical field H$_{c2}$ can be extracted from the R( T ) curves taking the temperature values of the midpoints of the R( T ) transition curves for instance. As a result, the upper critical field H$_{c2}$( T ) for H ‖ (001) is shown in Fig. 6. It clearly shows a positive curvature close to the critical temperature in zero field, indicating a sufficiently low intraband scat- tering. Using a common power law fit H$_{c}$$_{2}$ ( T ) = H$_{c}$$_{2}$ (0) · (1 − T/T$_{c}$ ) (1+ α ) for T > 6 K, a zero temperature critical field of H$_{c2}$(0) ≈ 9.82 T and an exponent α = 0.19 is calculated. This H$_{c2}$(0) value extrapolated from that fit is close to the value of 9.3 T given in [31] for a LuNi$_{2}$B$_{2}$C single crystal with a critical temperature T$_{c}$ ≈ 16.2 K and indicates a good agreement between the intrinsic properties of the thin film and the single crystal. In summary, thin LuNi$_{2}$B$_{2}$C film samples were prepared, which reproducibly combine almost perfect epitaxial growth with excellent superconductive properties (RRR up to 15, T$_{c}$ up to 15.8 K). The epitaxial growth is transferred from the MgO substrate to the borocarbide thin film via a perfectly textured lutetium oxide interface layer and can leads to a complete epitaxial in–plane order of the borocarbide film. The optimized films’ electrical resistance shows a critical temperature close to the single crystal optimum and a transition width of about 0.3 K in the absence of an external magnetic field. This combination of excellent structural and superconducting properties was achieved for the first time in borocarbide thin films. The measurement of the upper critical field along the [001] crystallographic direction is highly comparable with exemplary single crystal data. Consequently, the films can be almost adequately used for investigations of intrinsic properties of the LuNi$_{2}$B$_{2}$C phase. The authors thank M. K¨ uhnel and U. Besold for comprehensive laboratory services and K. Tscharntke for helpful thickness measurements. Helpful discussions with G. Fuchs are gratefully acknowledged. This work was financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungs- 11 VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V. SUMMARY