Study of ion beam induced epitaxial crystallization of SrTiO3

Abstract

Amorphous SrTiO3 on single crystal SrTiO3 (100) has been crystallized by He+, Ne+, or Ar+ ions with energy of 200 keV–2 MeV at a substrate temperature of 100–250 °C. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry in channeling geometry and x-ray diffraction were used to evaluate the crystallization. Ion-beam-induced epitaxial crystallization (IBIEC) of SrTiO3 was confirmed and the activation energy of IBIEC observed was about 0.1–0.3 eV, a value about 1/10 relative to thermal solid phase epitaxial crystallization. The observed IBIEC seems to be consistent with previously proposed models in which IBIEC is dominated by point defects produced by ion irradiation and their migration to the amorphous/crystal (a/c) interface. The IBIEC mechanism and point defect behavior are discussed by the use of simple models taking into account the rate limiting processes of IBIEC for both point defect diffusion and atomic rearrangement at a/c interface.