No Arabic abstract
Complex oxide perovskites have been widely studied for their diverse functional properties. When dimensionally reduced to epitaxial thin films and heterostructures these properties are frequently tunable, and the symmetry-breaking inherent to thin film structures can result in the emergence of new, novel, phenomena and properties. However, the ability to control and harness these structures relies on an atomic-level understanding and control of the growth process, made challenging by the lack of suitable in situ compositional characterization tools. In this work, the compositional-dependence of SrTiO3 on pulsed laser deposition growth parameters is investigated with in situ Auger electron spectroscopy and ex situ thin film x-ray diffraction, and verified with a simple escape depth model. We show that this is a suitable technique for monitoring subtle compositional shifts occurring during the deposition process, with broad implications for the continued development of thin film synthesis techniques.
To visualize the topography of thin oxide films during growth, thereby enabling to study its growth behavior quasi real-time, we have designed and integrated an atomic force microscope (AFM) in a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) vacuum setup. The AFM scanner and PLD target are integrated in a single support frame, combined with a fast sample transfer method, such that in-situ microscopy can be utilized after subsequent deposition pulses. The in-situ microscope can be operated from room temperature (RT) up to 700$^circ$C and at (process) pressures ranging from the vacuum base pressure of 10$^{-6}$ mbar up to 1 mbar, typical PLD conditions for the growth of oxide films. The performance of this instrument is demonstrated by resolving unit cell height surface steps and surface topography under typical oxide PLD growth conditions.
High quality Van der Waals chalcogenides are important for phase change data storage, thermoelectrics, and spintronics. Using a combination of statistical design of experiments and density functional theory, we clarify how the out-of-equilibrium van der Waals epitaxial deposition methods can improve the crystal quality of Sb2Te3 films. We compare films grown by radio frequency sputtering and pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The growth factors that influence the crystal quality for each method are different. For PLD grown films a thin amorphous Sb2Te3 seed layer most significantly influences the crystal quality. In contrast, the crystalline quality of films grown by sputtering is rather sensitive to the deposition temperature and less affected by the presence of a seed layer. This difference is somewhat surprising as both methods are out-of-thermal-equilibrium plasma-based methods. Non-adiabatic quantum molecular dynamics simulations show that this difference originates from the density of excited atoms in the plasma. The PLD plasma is more intense and with higher energy than that used in sputtering, and this increases the electronic temperature of the deposited atoms, which concomitantly increases the adatom diffusion lengths in PLD. In contrast, the adatom diffusivity is dominated by the thermal temperature for sputter grown films. These results explain the wide range of Sb2Te3 and superlattice crystal qualities observed in the literature. These results indicate that, contrary to popular belief, plasma-based deposition methods are suitable for growing high quality crystalline chalcogenides.
We present results on growth of large area epitaxial ReS2 thin film both on c plane sapphire substrate and MoS2 template by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Films tend to grow with (0001) ReS2 perpendicular to (0001) Al2O3 and (0001) ReS2 perpendicular to (0001) MoS2 parallel to (0001) Al2O3 at deposition temperature below 300 deg C. Films are polycrystalline grown at temperature above 300 deg C. The smoothness and quality of the films are significantly improved when grown on MoS2 template compared to sapphire substrate. The results show that PLD is suitable to grow ReS2 epitaxial thin film over large area for practical device application.
Cu2Ta4O12 (CTaO) thin films were successfully deposited on Si(100) substrates by pulsed-laser deposition technique. The crystalline structure and the surface morphology of the CTaO thin films were strongly affected by substrate temperature, oxygen pressure and target - substrate distance. In general during deposition of CTaO the formation of a Ta2O5 phase appeared, on which CTaO grew with different orientations. We report on the experimental set-up, details for film deposition and the film properties determined by SEM, EDX and XRD.
Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) is widely used to grow epitaxial thin films of quantum materials such as complex oxides. Here, we use in-situ X-ray scattering to study homoepitaxy of SrTiO$_3$ by energetic (e-) and thermalized (th-) PLD. We find that e-PLD suppresses the lateral growth of two-dimensional islands, which suggests that energetic particles break up smaller islands. Fast interlayer transport occurs for both e-PLD and th-PLD, implying a process operating on sub-microsecond timescales that doesnt depend strongly on the kinetic energy of the incident particles.