Formation of large-grain-sized BaSi2 epitaxial layers grown on Si(111) by molecular beam epitaxy

BaSi2 epitaxial films were grown on Si(1 1 1) substrates by a two-step growth method including reactive deposition epitaxy (RDE) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). To enlarge the grain size of BaSi2, the Ba deposition rate and duration were varied from 025 to 1.0 nm/min and from 5 to 120 min during RDE, respectively. The effect of post-annealing was also investigated at 760 degrees C for 10 min. Plan-view transmission electron micrographs indicated that the grain size in the MBE-grown BaSi2 was significantly increased up to approximately 4.0 mu m, which is much larger than 0.2 mu m, reported previously. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.