TY - JOUR
T1 - Coherent growth of oxide films on a cleaved layered metal oxide substrate
AU - Siwakoti, Prahald
AU - Guo, Hangwen
AU - Wang, Zhen
AU - Zhu, Yimei
AU - Fittipaldi, Rosalba
AU - Vecchione, Antonio
AU - Wang, Y.
AU - Mao, Zhiqiang
AU - Zhang, Jiandi
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Dr. M. Saghayezhian for help with experiments. This work is primarily supported by the US NSF under Grant No. DMR 1608865. The electronic microscopic work done at Brookhaven National Laboratory is sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886. Z.W. and H.G. were supported by the US DOE under Grant No. DOE DE-SC0002136. The single-crystal growth effort at Tulane was supported by the US DOE under EPSCoR Grant No. DE-SC0012432 with additional support from the Louisiana Board of Regents.
PY - 2018/10/18
Y1 - 2018/10/18
N2 - Understanding oxide interface-induced effects requires controlled epitaxial growth of films on well-defined substrate surfaces. While conventional film growth on ex situ prepared substrates has proven to be a successful route, the choices of appropriate substrates with atomically defined surfaces are limited. Here, by depositing La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 on Sr2RuO4 (001), we present an alternative method of growing oxide thin films on in situ cleaved surfaces of layered-structured substrates. Cleaving Sr2RuO4 at low temperature in ultrahigh vacuum exposes an atomically flat, solely SrO-terminated surface with up to micrometer-scale terraces. The deposition of La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 spontaneously diminishes the surface RuO6 in-plane rotational distortion of the substrate and results in a cubic-like perovskite film structure with (La/Sr)-O layer termination. The interface is atomically sharp without obvious deviation of lattice spacing and chemical valence, except in the first unit cell where Ru-Mn intermixing is observed. These results demonstrate that film growth on a cleaved substrate can be an alternative route to obtain well-defined interfaces and in addition increase the availability of substrates for future oxide films.
AB - Understanding oxide interface-induced effects requires controlled epitaxial growth of films on well-defined substrate surfaces. While conventional film growth on ex situ prepared substrates has proven to be a successful route, the choices of appropriate substrates with atomically defined surfaces are limited. Here, by depositing La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 on Sr2RuO4 (001), we present an alternative method of growing oxide thin films on in situ cleaved surfaces of layered-structured substrates. Cleaving Sr2RuO4 at low temperature in ultrahigh vacuum exposes an atomically flat, solely SrO-terminated surface with up to micrometer-scale terraces. The deposition of La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 spontaneously diminishes the surface RuO6 in-plane rotational distortion of the substrate and results in a cubic-like perovskite film structure with (La/Sr)-O layer termination. The interface is atomically sharp without obvious deviation of lattice spacing and chemical valence, except in the first unit cell where Ru-Mn intermixing is observed. These results demonstrate that film growth on a cleaved substrate can be an alternative route to obtain well-defined interfaces and in addition increase the availability of substrates for future oxide films.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.2.104407
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.2.104407
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85059866358
VL - 2
JO - Physical Review Materials
JF - Physical Review Materials
SN - 2475-9953
IS - 10
M1 - 104407
ER -