Growth and Properties of Heavy Fermion CeCu2Ge2 and CeFe2Ge2 thin films

TL;DR

This paper reports the successful growth and characterization of heavy fermion CeCu2Ge2 and CeFe2Ge2 thin films, demonstrating their structural quality and similar electronic properties to single crystals, advancing thin film heavy fermion research.

Contribution

First demonstration of epitaxial growth of heavy fermion CeCu2Ge2 and CeFe2Ge2 films with properties comparable to single crystals.

Findings

Films exhibit similar temperature-dependent transport as single crystals.

Growth results in granular morphology with c-axis orientation.

Structural analysis confirms single-phase epitaxial films.

Abstract

Epitaxial films of heavy fermion CeCu2Ge2 and CeFe2Ge2 are grown on DyScO3 and MgO substrates using molecular beam epitaxy. The growth begins via island nucleation leading to a granular morphology. The grains grow flat with c-axis orientation after nucleating, as indicated by in-situ reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and ex-situ analysis including atomic force microscopy (AFM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). These single phase films show similar temperature dependent transport to single crystals of the materials indicating that similar collective order occurs in the films as in single crystals.