MgO/Cu$_{\mathrm{2}}$O superlattices: growth of epitaxial two-dimensional nanostructures.
ORAL
Abstract
Superlattices (SLS) created by alternating dissimilar materials produced novel materials of multi-functionalities. The majority of work reported in literature on epitaxial SLS has been on alternating layers of the same space group (SG) and crystal structures (CS), SLS with the same CS but different SG have not been studied as much. We have grown SLS with two well-known oxide materials cuprite (Cu$_{\mathrm{2}}$O, CS $=$ cubic and SG $=$ Pn m) and magnesium oxide (MgO, CS $=$ cubic, SG $=$ Fm m). The effects of an MgO buffer layer grown near 650\textdegree C at the film-substrate interface was found to be essential to reasonable long-range atomic orders. GIXRD, XRR, electron diffraction and TEM were used to investigate the interface abruptness, smoothness and the general crystallinity of the individual layers. Interdiffusion between the MgO and Cu$_{\mathrm{2}}$O at interfacial regions puts a limit of 250\textdegree C as growth temperature of superlattice of reasonably sharp interfaces.
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