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    Heteroepitaxial growth of T-Nb2O5 on SrTiO3
    (Basel : MDPI, 2018) Boschker, Jos E.; Markurt, Toni; Albrecht, Martin; Schwarzkopf, Jutta
    There is a growing interest in exploiting the functional properties of niobium oxides in general and of the T-Nb2O5 polymorph in particular. Fundamental investigations of the properties of niobium oxides are, however, hindered by the availability of materials with sufficient structural perfection. It is expected that high-quality T-Nb2O5 can be made using heteroepitaxial growth. Here, we investigated the epitaxial growth of T-Nb2O5 on a prototype perovskite oxide, SrTiO3. Even though there exists a reasonable lattice mismatch in one crystallographic direction, these materials have a significant difference in crystal structure: SrTiO3 is cubic, whereas T-Nb2O5 is orthorhombic. It is found that this difference in symmetry results in the formation of domains that have the T-Nb2O5 c-axis aligned with the SrTiO3 <001>s in-plane directions. Hence, the number of domain orientations is four and two for the growth on (100)s- and (110)s-oriented substrates, respectively. Interestingly, the out-of-plane growth direction remains the same for both substrate orientations, suggesting a weak interfacial coupling between the two materials. Despite challenges associated with the heteroepitaxial growth of T-Nb2O5, the T-Nb2O5 films presented in this paper are a significant improvement in terms of structural quality compared to their polycrystalline counterparts.
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    Faceting and metal-exchange catalysis in (010) β-Ga2O3 thin films homoepitaxially grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy
    (New York : American Institute of Physics, 2018) Mazzolini, P.; Vogt, P.; Schewski, R.; Wouters, C.; Albrecht, M.; Bierwagen, Oliver
    We here present an experimental study on (010)-oriented -Ga2O3 thin films homoepitaxially grown by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy. We study the effect of substrate treatments (i.e., O-plasma and Ga-etching) and several deposition parameters (i.e., growth temperature and metal-to-oxygen flux ratio) on the resulting Ga2O3 surface morphology and growth rate. In situ and ex-situ characterizations identified the formation of (110) and (¯110)-facets on the nominally oriented (010) surface induced by the Ga-etching of the substrate and by several growth conditions, suggesting (110) to be a stable (yet unexplored) substrate orientation. Moreover, we demonstrate how metal-exchange catalysis enabled by an additional In-flux significantly increases the growth rate (>threefold increment) of monoclinic Ga2O3 at high growth temperatures, while maintaining a low surface roughness (rms < 0.5 nm) and preventing the incorporation of In into the deposited layer. This study gives important indications for obtaining device-quality thin films and opens up the possibility to enhance the growth rate in -Ga2O3 homoepitaxy on different surfaces [e.g., (100) and (001)] via molecular beam epitaxy.