Amorphous film thickness dependence for epitaxy of perovskite oxide films under excimer laser irradiation

We have studied the epitaxial growth of perovskite manganite LaMnO3 (LMO) on SrTiO3(1 0 0) in the excimer laser assisted metal organic deposition process. The LMO was preferentially grown from the substrate surface by the KrF laser irradiation. The study of amorphous LMO film thickness dependence on epitaxial growth under the excimer laser irradiation revealed that the photo-thermal heating effect strongly depended on the amorphous film thickness due to a low thermal conductivity of amorphous LMO: the ion-migration for chemical bond-forming at the reaction interface would be strongly enhanced in the amorphous LMO film with the large film thickness about 210 nm. On the other hand, the photochemical effect occurred efficiently for the amorphous film thickness in the range of 35-210 nm. These results indicate that the epitaxial growing rate was dominated by the photo-thermal heating after the photo-chemical activation at the growth interface. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.