Complex oxide growth using simultaneous in situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction and x-ray reflectivity: When is one layer complete?

During layer-by-layer homoepitaxial growth, both the Reflection High-Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED) intensity and the x-ray reflection intensity will oscillate, and each complete oscillation indicates the addition of one monolayer of material. However, it is well documented, but not well understood, that the phase of the RHEED oscillations varies from growth to growth and thus the maxima in the RHEED intensity oscillations do not necessarily occur at the completion of a layer. We demonstrate this by using simultaneous in situ x-ray reflectivity and RHEED to characterize layer-by-layer growth of SrTiO3. We show that we can control the RHEED oscillation phase by changing the pre-growth substrate annealing conditions, changing the RHEED oscillation phase by as much as 137 degrees. In addition, during growth via pulsed laser deposition, the relaxation times between each laser pulse can be used to determine when a layer is complete, independent of the phase of the RHEED oscillation. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.