Novel Epitaxial Growth and Surface Order-Disorder Transitions of CU3AU(110) and CU3AU(111)

Abstract

AbstractWe report the results of a reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) study on the order-disorder transitions at the (111) and (110) surface of Cu3Au. Our Cu3Au films were epitaxially grown on sapphire substrates with bcc (Nb or Mo-Cr) buffer layers. The (111) and (110) surfaces of Cu3Au are atomically flat as indicated by the RHEED patterns. We use the normalized integrated intensity of the superstructure streaks to measure the long range order parameter. We observed that the surface layers of both (110) and (111) Cu3Au exhibit an apparently continuous order-disorder transition, close to that predicted by mean field theory [5]. The kinetics of surface ordering also were monitored by RHEED after initial deposition of disordered layers, 2 MLs thick, on the ordered Cu3Au templates. In studies of the surface reordering process we find that the RHEED pattern is almost entirely sensitive to the surface layer alone.