51 research outputs found
Breakdown of step-flow growth in unstable homoepitaxy
Two mechanisms for the breakdown of step flow growth, in the sense of the
appearance of steps of opposite sign to the original vicinality, are studied by
kinetic Monte Carlo simulations and scaling arguments. The first mechanism is
the nucleation of islands on the terraces, which leads to mound formation if
interlayer transport is sufficiently inhibited. The second mechanism is the
formation of vacancy islands due to the self-crossing of strongly meandering
steps. The competing roles of the growth of the meander amplitude and the
synchronization of the meander phase are emphasized. The distance between
vacancy islands along the step direction appears to be proportional to the
square of the meander wavelengthComment: 7 pages, 9 figure
Step velocity tuning of SrRuO3 step flow growth on SrTiO3
Taking advantage of vicinal (001) SrTiO3 substrates with different mean
terrace widths, the heteroepitaxial growth of SrRuO3 in the step flow mode has
been mapped as a function of mean step velocity. Transition between stable and
unstable step flow is shown to occur at a well-defined critical step velocity,
with a step bunching instability observed below this threshold. The ability to
pass from unstable to stable step flow during growth upon increasing the mean
step velocity is demonstrated. This result is discussed in terms of a
stress-based driving force for step bunching in competition with an effective
step-up adatom current.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Interface Electronic Structure in a Metal/Ferroelectric Heterostructure under Applied Bias
The effective barrier height between an electrode and a ferroelectric (FE)
depends on both macroscopic electrical properties and microscopic chemical and
electronic structure. The behavior of a prototypical electrode/FE/electrode
structure, Pt/BaTiO3/Nb-doped SrTiO3, under in-situ bias voltage is
investigated using X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. The full band alignment is
measured and is supported by transport measurements. Barrier heights depend on
interface chemistry and on the FE polarization. A differential response of the
core levels to applied bias as a function of the polarization state is
observed, consistent with Callen charge variations near the interface.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Time-resolved PhotoEmission Spectroscopy on a Metal/Ferroelectric Heterostructure
In thin film ferroelectric capacitor the chemical and electronic structure of
the electrode/FE interface can play a crucial role in determining the kinetics
of polarization switching. We investigate the electronic structure of a
Pt/BaTiO3/SrTiO3:Nb capacitor using time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.
The chemical, electronic and depth sensitivity of core level photoemission is
used to probe the transient response of different parts of the upper
electrode/ferroelectric interface to voltage pulse induced polarization
reversal. The linear response of the electronic structure agrees quantitatively
with a simple RC circuit model. The non-linear response due to the polarization
switch is demonstrated by the time-resolved response of the characteristic core
levels of the electrode and the ferroelectric. Adjustment of the RC circuit
model allows a first estimation of the Pt/BTO interface capacitance. The
experiment shows the interface capacitance is at least 100 times higher than
the bulk capacitance of the BTO film, in qualitative agreement with theoretical
predictions from the literature.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Active Based-Metasurfaces for Mid-Infrared Optoelectronics Devices
We develop low-temperature (450°C) deposition conditions for vanadium di-oxide phase change material. It permits implementation of tunable mid-infrared meta-surfaces on quantum cascade lasers based heterostructures
Morphology of ledge patterns during step flow growth of metal surfaces vicinal to fcc(001)
The morphological development of step edge patterns in the presence of
meandering instability during step flow growth is studied by simulations and
numerical integration of a continuum model. It is demonstrated that the kink
Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier responsible for the instability leads to an invariant
shape of the step profiles. The step morphologies change with increasing
coverage from a somewhat triangular shape to a more flat, invariant steady
state form. The average pattern shape extracted from the simulations is shown
to be in good agreement with that obtained from numerical integration of the
continuum theory.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX 3, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Competing mechanisms for step meandering in unstable growth
The meander instability of a vicinal surface growing under step flow
conditions is studied within a solid-on-solid model. In the absence of edge
diffusion the selected meander wavelength agrees quantitatively with the
continuum linear stability analysis of Bales and Zangwill [Phys. Rev. B {\bf
41}, 4400 (1990)]. In the presence of edge diffusion a local instability
mechanism related to kink rounding barriers dominates, and the meander
wavelength is set by one-dimensional nucleation. The long-time behavior of the
meander amplitude differs in the two cases, and disagrees with the predictions
of a nonlinear step evolution equation [O. Pierre-Louis et al., Phys. Rev.
Lett. {\bf 80}, 4221 (1998)]. The variation of the meander wavelength with the
deposition flux and with the activation barriers for step adatom detachment and
step crossing (the Ehrlich-Schwoebel barrier) is studied in detail. The
interpretation of recent experiments on surfaces vicinal to Cu(100) [T.
Maroutian et al., Phys. Rev. B {\bf 64}, 165401 (2001)] in the light of our
results yields an estimate for the kink barrier at the close packed steps.Comment: 8 pages, 7 .eps figures. Final version. Some errors in chapter V
correcte
Asymptotic step profiles from a nonlinear growth equation for vicinal surfaces
We study a recently proposed nonlinear evolution equation describing the
collective step meander on a vicinal surface subject to the Bales-Zangwill
growth instability [O. Pierre-Louis et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. (80), 4221
(1998)]. A careful numerical analysis shows that the dynamically selected step
profile consists of sloped segments, given by an inverse error function and
steepening as sqrt(t), which are matched to pieces of a stationary
(time-independent) solution describing the maxima and minima. The effect of
smoothening by step edge diffusion is included heuristically, and a
one-parameter family of evolution equations is introduced which contains
relaxation by step edge diffusion and by attachment-detachment as special
cases. The question of the persistence of an initially imposed meander
wavelength is investigated in relation to recent experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 5 included figures. Typo in Eq.(5) corrected, section
headlines added and Ref.[12] update
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