Morphological evolution and growth mechanism of hierarchical structure of PbTe films grown by off-axis magnetron co-sputtering

- The hierarchical structures with various shapes of PbTe were grown by off-axis magnetron sputtering.
- The morphology evolution relied on the co-sputter Te fluxes and substrate temperatures.
- The pyramids formation originated from the columnar growth mode.
- The growth mechanism is relative to the changes of the growth rate ratio between the {1 1 1} and {1 0 0} planes.