One of the potentially optimal interfaces of β-FeSi2/Si

A possible optimal epitaxial relationship between the β-FeSi2 film and a Si substrate was determined using the Δg parallelism rule and a CCSL model. The predicted interface exhibits a good lattice matching, containing a secondary invariant line lying in an irrational orientation of [−2 −2.9 2.9]Si. The corresponding interface (−2.9 1 −1)Si, which defines the plane of the Si substrate, must contain steps. This interface may contain a set of the secondary edge dislocations with the Burgers vector of [010]β/2 in a spacing of 26 nm to accommodate the small (1.5%) misfit between [010]β and [0 −1 −1]Si. Since the overall interfacial misfit is small, a high-quality β-FeSi2 film will be possibly obtained by epitaxial growth on the special stepped Si substrate.