Abstract
We demonstrate direct epitaxial growth of high-quality hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) layers on graphite using high-temperature plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. Atomic force microscopy reveals mono- and few-layer island growth, while conducting atomic force microscopy shows that the grown hBN has a resistance which increases exponentially with the number of layers, and has electrical properties comparable to exfoliated hBN. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Raman microscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements on hBN confirm the formation of sp2-bonded hBN and a band gap of 5.9 ± 0.1 eV with no chemical intermixing with graphite. We also observe hexagonal moiré patterns with a period of 15 nm, consistent with the alignment of the hBN lattice and the graphite substrate.
AbstractThe surface morphology of Ge grown on Si (001) and porous Si(001) by molecular beam epitaxy at 380 °C is examined using atomic force microscopy (AFM). For layer thicknesses of 30 nm, the surface shows islanding while still maintaining some of the underlying roughness of the surface of porous Si. For thicknesses in the 100 nm range, the surface roughness is not visible, but the islanding persists. Unlike the case of silicon where islands tend to merge and nearly disappear as the thickness of the deposited layer rises, we observe on the porous layer the persistence of the islands with no merging even for macroscopic thicknesses as large as 0.73 microns.
ABSTRACTThe combination of the molecular beam epitaxy growth method with the in-situ reflection high energy electron diffraction measurements currently offers unprecedented control of crystalline growth materials. We present here a stoichiometric study of MnxSc(1-x) [x = 0, 0.03, 0.05, 0.15, 0.25, 0.35, and 0.50] thin films grown on MgO(001) substrates with this growth method. Reflection high energy electron diffraction and atomic force microscopy measurements reveal alloy behavior for all of our samples. In addition, we found that samples Mn0.10Sc0.90 and Mn0.50Sc0.50 display surface self-assembled nanowires with a length/width ratio of ~ 800 – 2000.
ABSTRACTThe influence of the substrate temperature on the morphology and ordering of InGaAs quantum dots (QD), grown on GaAs (001) wafers by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) under As2 flux has been studied using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Photoluminescence (PL) measurements. The experimental results show that lateral and vertical orderings occur for temperatures greater than 520°C and that QDs self-organize in a 6-fold symmetry network on (001) surface for T=555°C. Vertical orderings of asymmetric QDs, along directions a few degrees off [001], are observed on a large scale and their formation is discussed.
Hexagonal Boron Nitride Tunnel Barriers Grown on Graphite by High Temperature Molecular Beam Epitaxy