Abstract

The epitaxial Cu2O films are grown on MgO (001) substrates by the dynamic aurora pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method. The structure and epitaxial growth of the as-prepared thin films at different substrate temperatures (25 °C to 600 °C) were investigated. The thin film prepared at room temperature (RT, 25 °C) exhibits (111) plane of monoclinic CuO phase with poor crystallinity. The thin films deposited at 200 °C to 600 °C show single-phase cubic Cu2O with good crystallinity. The highly oriented epitaxial Cu2O thin film on the MgO substrate is achieved at low temperatures of 200 °C by applying an induced electromagnetic field during thin film growth. The quality and crystallinity of epitaxial Cu2O thin films remarkably improved with increasing temperature from 200 °C to 600 °C and all these thin films exhibited an out-of-plane epitaxial relationship of Cu2O (011) ‖ MgO (001). The CuO thin film grown on MgO substrate at RT shows a single domain structure, as observed by RHEED. In constrast, Cu2O films grown at 200 °C to 600 °C exhibit two different kinds of domain structure with corresponding in-plane epitaxial relationship of Cu2O [100] ‖ MgO [110] and Cu2O [100] ‖ MgO [11¯0]. This report reveals, for the first time, the feasibility of epitaxial growth of highly oriented Cu2O (011) thin film achieved at the low temperature of 200 °C by the dynamic aurora PLD method. The quality of epitaxial Cu2O (011) is significantly enhanced with increasing substrate temperature from 200 °C to 600 °C.

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