Epitaxial growth of MgO on GaAs(001) for growing epitaxial BaTiO3 thin films by pulsed laser deposition

MgO buffer layers were deposited on GaAs by pulsed laser deposition for epitaxial growth of BaTiO3. MgO was grown epitaxially on GaAs for the first time; the orientation is (001) on GaAs(001). The best crystallographic quality was obtained at 350 °C in 5×10−6 Torr O2. BaTiO3 films with (001) orientation grew epitaxially on MgO/GaAs. The in-plane epitaxial relationship was BaTiO3[100]∥ MgO[100]∥ GaAs[100] in spite of a large lattice mismatch (25.5%) between MgO and GaAs.