Growth of antiperovskite oxide Ca3SnO films by pulsed laser deposition

We report the epitaxial growth of Ca3SnO antiperovskite oxide films on (0 0 1)-oriented cubic yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) substrates by using a conventional pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. In this work, a sintered Ca3SnO pellet is used as the ablation target. X-ray diffraction measurements demonstrate the (0 0 1) growth of Ca3SnO films with the antiperovskite structure and a cube-on-cube orientation relationship to the YSZ substrate. The successful synthesis of the antiperovskite phase is further confirmed by X-ray photoemission spectroscopy. These results strongly suggest that antiperovskite-oxide films can be directly grown on substrates from the target material using a PLD technique.