The pulsed laser deposition of several cerium-based oxides has been studied in order to prepare buffer layers tailored to the epitaxial growth of oxides. It has been shown that ceria-based oxide films with a sufficiently wide variation of lattice constant (0.541-0.551 nm) could be prepared. CeO2, Zr1-xCexO2 and Ce1-xLaxO2-x/2 epitaxial films with ion: roughness were obtained. The results obtained by RHEED, XRD, RES and AFM methods have confirmed the high quality of heteroepitaxial CeO2, Zr1-xCexO2 and Ce1-xLaxO2-x/2 layers, and we have evaluated the difference in crystallinities for the films grown from metallic alloy targets and sintered oxide targets. These films can be used in YBa2Cu3O7-based heterostructures as insulating barriers. In the case of Ce1-xLaxO2-x/2 (0 less than or equal to x less than or equal to 0.4) high-quality epitaxial films are obtained on LaAlO3 and SrTiO3, the buffer layers are epitaxially grown with a 45 degrees rotation of the in-plane axes with respect to those of the substrate and the surface roughness is low (R-rms = 0.24 nm/l mu m(2)). The properties of YBa2Cu3O7 films deposited on these buffered substrates are as good as those for the film grown without any buffer layer, and furthermore the field dependence of the R's at 77 K and 10 GHz is better, being about 3.8 x 10(-3) m Omega/Oe which is smaller than the 9 x 10(-3) m Omega/Oe recorded in the case of unbuffered substrates.