Fabrication of Pseudocubic SrRuO3 (100) Epitaxial Thin Films on Si by Pulsed Laser Deposition

Pseudocubic SrRuO 3 (100) epitaxial thin films were successfully fabricated on Si (100) with a SrO buffer layer of 6nm thickness by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) revealed that the epitaxial growth of SrO occurred on naturally oxidized Si substrates, followed by the epitaxial growth of SrRuO 3 . X-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed high crystallinity with a full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of 1.9° in the SrRuO 3 (200) rocking curve. XRD study of the in-plane orientation clarified a cube-on-cube epitaxy in which SrRuO 3 <010> was rotated by 45° with respect to Si <010>. Deoxidization of SiO 2 on Si by Sr is thought to play an important role in realizing the epitaxial growth of SrO.