Combined pulsed laser deposition and non-contact atomic force microscopy system for studies of insulator metal oxide thin films.

Daiki Katsube,Masayuki Abe,Hayato Yamashita,Satoshi Abo

doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.63

Abstract

We have designed and developed a combined system of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) for observations of insulator metal oxide surfaces. With this system, the long-period iterations of sputtering and annealing used in conventional methods for preparing a metal oxide film surface are not required. The performance of the combined system is demonstrated for the preparation and high-resolution NC-AFM imaging of atomically flat thin films of anatase TiO2(001) and LaAlO3(100).

Highlights

The surfaces of metal oxides have attractive and useful properties, such as superconductivity, ferroelectricity and catalytic activity [1]
In order to image surface atoms of insulator metal oxides with atomic resolution, in this study, we have developed a combined system consisting of an non-contact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) operated in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) at room temperature
There have been studies in which the growth of atomically flat metal oxides has been demonstrated [3,13,27,28,52,53,54,55], it is still difficult to find the best sample preparation conditions for PLD for atomic resolution imaging with NC-AFM and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM)

Summary

Introduction

The surfaces of metal oxides have attractive and useful properties, such as superconductivity, ferroelectricity and catalytic activity [1]. For observations of surface atoms of metal oxides using NC-AFM and STM, it is critical to prepare atomically flat and clean surfaces. A standard method for obtaining clean surfaces of metal oxides is performing iterations of Ar+ sputtering and annealing at high temperatures [23,24,25,26,37,41,42].

Results

Conclusion