Strained lateral structure and its relaxation in a Cu2O thin crystal epitaxially grown on MgO surface

Abstract

We measured in-plane X-ray diffraction and investigated the strained lateral structure and its relaxation in a Cu2O thin crystal epitaxially grown in a small gap between paired MgO substrates. Although one side MgO was peeled off to irradiate Cu2O with X-ray, a thin MgO layer remained on Cu2O, and diffraction peaks of (400)-planes in both MgO and Cu2O were detected. The peak has four-fold symmetry on sample rotation, and the lattice constant estimated from the diffraction angle is 4.254 Å. The lattice constant is larger than that of MgO and smaller than that of strain-free Cu2O. Furthermore, it was found that the lattice strain in Cu2O relaxes at a depth of ≈0.15 μm from MgO on the basis of the estimated X-ray penetration depth under consideration of low incident angle, absorption and refraction of X-ray.