Pulsed laser deposition of complex oxide heteroepitaxy

Abstract

The modern studies of complex oxides have been mainly driven by the development of advanced growth and characterization techniques, which provide researchers unprecedented access to new insights and functionalities of these materials. Epitaxial growth of thin films and related architectures offers a pathway to the discovery and stabilization of a wide spectrum of new possibilities in conjunction with the availability of high quality materials that produced with larger lateral sizes and being grown constrainedly. Compared with conventional growth techniques, such as sputtering, spin coating, sol–gel processes, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, molecular beam epitaxy and so on, no other single advance in the creation of oxide materials has had as pronounced an impact as pulsed laser deposition. In pursuit of the fruitful functionalities and exciting physical phenomena among complex oxides, pulsed laser deposition technique has played an important role to fulfill the flurry of complex oxides in recent decades. In this article, we focus on the details of the growth of epitaxial oxide thin films and the related polymorphs, as well as recent advances in control of the oxide heteroepitaxy via pulsed laser deposition.