Effect Of The Substrate Surface Termination On The Structure Of The Bi4Ti3O12 / SrTiO3 Interface

Abstract

Bismuth titanate (Bi4Ti3O12) belongs to a family of layered perovskites (Aurivillius phases) that are important for nonvolatile ferroelectric memory applications. Recently epitaxial (001) Bi4Ti3O12 thin films have been grown on (001) SrTiO3 by reactive molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) in an adsorptioncontrolled growth regime. Bi4Ti3O12 has a monoclinic layered perovskite structure at room temperature which consists of alternating Bi2O2 and Bi4Ti3O10 perovskite layers (see the upper part of Fig. 1(b)). Due to the significant difference in crystal structure between film and substrate, the surface termination of the SrTiO3 substrate and the way in which growth is initiated might be expected to have a significant influence on the interfacial structure. In this work, we present high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) studies of the Bi4Ti3O12 / SrTiO3 interfacial structure for Bi4Ti3O12 films grown on SrTiO3 substrates terminated with either the TiO2- or SrO-layers.Bi4Ti3O12 thin films were grown on SrO- or TiO2-layer terminated homoepitaxial SrTiO3 buffer layers grown on SrTiO3 (001) substrates by reactive MBE.