Epitaxial growth of Sc2O3 films on Gd2O3-buffered Si substrates by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract

We investigated the optimal conditions to prepare high-quality Sc2O3 films on Gd2O3-buffered Si wafers using pulsed laser deposition technique with an aim at developing waveguide devices that can transform the performance of the gradient echo quantum memory based on bulk crystals. Under the optimal conditions, only oxide and Si (2 2 2) peaks appeared in the X-ray diffraction pattern. The Sc2O3 (2 2 2) diffraction peak was located at 2θ = 31.5° with a full width at half maxima (FWHM) of 0.16°, and its rocking curve had a FWHM of 0.10°. In-plane epitaxial relationship was confirmed by X-ray pole figure where Sc2O3 (1 1 1) was parallel to Si (1 1 1). High-resolution TEM images indicated clear interfaces and perfect lattice images with sharp electron diffraction dots. All these results confirm that the oxide films on Si were single crystalline with high quality.