Avoiding polar catastrophe in the growth of polarly orientated nickel perovskite thin films by reactive oxide molecular beam epitaxy
H. F. Yang,
Z. T. Liu,
C. C. Fan,
Q. Yao,
P. Xiang,
K. L. Zhang,
M. Y. Li,
J. S. Liu,
D. W. Shen
Affiliations
H. F. Yang
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
Z. T. Liu
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
C. C. Fan
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
Q. Yao
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
P. Xiang
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
K. L. Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
M. Y. Li
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
J. S. Liu
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
D. W. Shen
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
By means of the state-of-the-art reactive oxide molecular beam epitaxy, we synthesized (001)- and (111)-orientated polar LaNiO3 thin films. In order to avoid the interfacial reconstructions induced by polar catastrophe, screening metallic Nb-doped SrTiO3 and iso-polarity LaAlO3 substrates were chosen to achieve high-quality (001)-orientated films in a layer-by-layer growth mode. For largely polar (111)-orientated films, we showed that iso-polarity LaAlO3 (111) substrate was more suitable than Nb-doped SrTiO3. In situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction, ex situ high-resolution X-ray diffraction, and atomic force microscopy were used to characterize these films. Our results show that special attentions need to be paid to grow high-quality oxide films with polar orientations, which can prompt the explorations of all-oxide electronics and artificial interfacial engineering to pursue intriguing emergent physics like proposed interfacial superconductivity and topological phases in LaNiO3 based superlattices.
