Epitaxial (100)-oriented Mo/V superlattice grown on MgO(100) by dcMS and HiPIMS

•Epitaxial (100)-oriented Mo/V superlattices have been grown by HiPIMS and dcMS on MgO(100) for various temperatures.•The study was aimed to investigate the effect of ionized HiPIMS process onlowering the growth temperature.•The dcMS process was found to give superior superlattice growth at high growth temperature.•The mixed Mo HiPIMS and V dcMS process gives best result at lower growth temperatures.

Epitaxial (100)-oriented Mo/V superlattices have been grown by High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS) and dc Magnetron Sputtering (dcMS) on single-crystalline MgO(100) substrates at growth temperatures ranging from 30 °C to 600 °C. Superlattice bilayer period of Mo/V around 12/12 monolayers and 15 repeat periods was studied. This study aims to investigate the effect of the HiPIMS process on reducing the growth temperature of Mo/V superlattices using the high energy ionized Mo, V species in the HiPIMS plasma. In one case, the Mo layer was only grown with the HiPIMS process and V layer grown using the dcMS process while in another both layers were grown with the HiPIMS process. The as-deposited films were characterized by X-ray reflection and diffraction techniques. The dcMS process was found to give superior superlattice growth at high growth temperatures while a mixed Mo HiPIMS and V dcMS process gives better result at lower growth temperatures (300 °C). Room temperature growth reveals that neither the mixed Mo HiPIMS and V dcMS process nor the pure HiPIMS for both materials can produce better result compared to the pure dcMS process, which gives a relatively better result.