Oxygen radical irradiation effect in reactive magnetron sputtering for orientation selective epitaxial growth of CeO2(100) layers on Si(1 0 0) substrates

Orientation selective epitaxial growth of CeO2(100) and (1 1 0) layers is attained on practical H-terminated Si(1 0 0) surfaces by controlling substrate bias and a growth rate using reactive DC magnetron sputtering enhanced with an inductively coupled RF plasma in an Ar/O2Ar/O2 environment. Application of oxygen radical beams to reactive sputtering proved to enable growth temperature lowering by at least 100∘C in the CeO2(100) layer growth under optimum substrate bias of 15 V, wherein conventional reactive sputtering requires ∼800∘C. X-ray diffraction analyses confirmed that crystalline quality of CeO2(100) layers grown with the oxygen radical beam application is much improved than those grown by conventional reactive sputtering.