Epitaxy of Fe3O4 on Si(001) by pulsed laser deposition using a TiN/MgO buffer layer

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the successful epitaxial growth of Fe3O4 on Si(001) substrates using pulsed laser deposition with a TiN/MgO buffer layer, enabling high-quality oxide integration on silicon for advanced device applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for epitaxial growth of Fe3O4 on silicon with a TiN/MgO buffer, verified by RHEED and XRD, advancing oxide-silicon integration techniques.

Findings

High-quality epitaxial Fe3O4 achieved on Si(001)

Effective buffer layer of TiN/MgO facilitates epitaxy

RHEED and XRD confirm epitaxial growth

Abstract

Epitaxy of oxide materials on silicon (Si) substrates is of great interest for future functional devices using the large variety of physical properties of the oxides as ferroelectricity, ferromagnetism, or superconductivity. Recently, materials with high spin polarization of the charge carriers have become interesting for semiconductor-oxide hybrid devices in spin electronics. Here, we report on pulsed laser deposition of magnetite (Fe3O4) on Si(001) substrates cleaned by an in situ laser beam high temperature treatment. After depositing a double buffer layer of titanium nitride (TiN) and magnesium oxide (MgO), a high quality epitaxial magnetite layer can be grown as verified by RHEED intensity oscillations and high resolution x-ray diffraction.