Strain Mismatch Induced Tilted Heteroepitaxial (000l) Hexagonal ZnO Films on (001) Cubic Substrates
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abstract
AbstractA novel strain mismatch induced tilted epitaxy method has been demonstrated for producing high quality (000l) hexagonal films on (001) cubic substrates. Highly oriented hexagonal (000l) ZnO films are grown on cubic (001) MgO substrates using Sm0.28Zr0.72O2 (SZO) as a template. The large lattice mismatch of >13% between the obvious crystallographic matching directions of the template and substrate means that cubeoncube epitaxy is energetically unfavorable, leading to growth instead of two high index, low energy compact planes, close to the {111} orientation. These planes give three different inplane orientations resulting from coincidence site lattice matching (12 inplane orientations in total) and provide a pseudohexagonal symmetry surface for the ZnO to grow on. The texture of the ensuing (000l) ZnO layer is markedly improved over the template. The work opens up both a new avenue for growing technologically important hexagonal structures on a range of readily available, (001) cubic substrates, as well as showing that there are wide possibilities for heteroepitaxial growth of a range of dissimilar materials.
