Epitaxial Growth of Perovskite SrBiO Film on SrTiO by Oxide Molecular Beam Epitaxy
arXiv:1910.02619 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.100802
Abstract
Hole-doped perovskite bismuthates such as BaKBiO and SrKBiO are well-known bismuth-based oxide high-transition-temperature superconductors. Reported thin bismuthate films show relatively low quality, likely due to their large lattice mismatch with the substrate and a low sticking coefficient of Bi at high temperatures. Here, we report the successful epitaxial thin film growth of the parent compound strontium bismuthate SrBiO on SrO-terminated SrTiO (001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Two different growth methods, high-temperature co-deposition or recrystallization cycles of low-temperature deposition plus high-temperature annealing, are developed to improve the epitaxial growth. SrBiO has a pseudocubic lattice constant 4.25 Å, an 8.8\% lattice mismatch on SrTiO substrate, leading to a large strain in the first few unit cells. Films thicker than 6 unit cells prepared by both methods are fully relaxed to bulk lattice constant and have similar quality. Compared to high-temperature co-deposition, the recrystallization method can produce higher quality 1-6 unit cell films that are coherently or partially strained. Photoemission experiments reveal the bonding and antibonding states close to the Fermi level due to Bi and O hybridization, in good agreement with density functional theory calculations. This work provides general guidance to the synthesis of high-quality perovskite bismuthate films.