Single-crystalline PbTe film growth through reorientation

TL;DR

This paper reports a novel growth mode for heteroepitaxial PbTe on InP that achieves single-crystalline films despite large lattice mismatch, through a reorientation process during island coalescence.

Contribution

It introduces a new heteroepitaxial growth mode enabling high-quality PbTe film growth on InP with large lattice mismatch, via reorientation during island coalescence.

Findings

Single-crystalline PbTe films achieved despite large lattice mismatch.

Reorientation process during island coalescence facilitates high-quality heteroepitaxy.

Distinct growth mode expands material combination possibilities.

Abstract

Heteroepitaxy enables the engineering of novel properties, which do not exist in a single material. Two principle growth modes are identified for material combinations with large lattice mismatch, Volmer-Weber and Stranski-Krastanov. Both lead to the formation of three-dimensional islands, hampering the growth of flat defect-free thin films. This limits the number of viable material combinations. Here, we report a distinct growth mode found in molecular beam epitaxy of PbTe on InP initiated by pre-growth surface treatments. Early nucleation forms islands analogous to the Volmer-Weber growth mode, but film closure exhibits a flat surface with atomic terracing. Remarkably, despite multiple distinct crystal orientations found in the initial islands, the final film is single-crystalline. This is possible due to a reorientation process occurring during island coalescence, facilitating high quality heteroepitaxy despite the large lattice mismatch, difference in crystal structures and diverging thermal expansion coefficients of PbTe and InP. This growth mode offers a new strategy for the heteroepitaxy of dissimilar materials and expands the realm of possible material combinations.