Growth of SrTiO3(110) film by oxide molecular beam epitaxy with feedback control

Abstract

By controlling the growth of complex oxide films with atomic precision, emergent phenomena and fascinating properties have been discovered, and even been manipulated. With oxide molecular beam epitaxy (OMBE) we grow high-quality SrTiO3(110) films by evaporating Sr and Ti metals with separate controls of the open/close timing of the shutters. The incident electron beam angle of the reflective high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) is adjusted to make the (01) beam sensitive to surface chemical concentration. By monitoring such an intensity, we tune the shutter timing to synchronize the evaporation amount of Sr and Ti in real-time. The intensity is further used as a feedback control signal for automatic growth optimization to fully compensate the possible fluctuation of the source flux rates upon extended growth. A 22 nm-thick film is obtained with the precision of metal cation stoichiometry better than 0.5%.