Ion Beam-Assisted Deposition of Biaxially Aligned CeO 2 and ZrO 2 Thin Films on Amorphous Substrates

Deposition of HTSC and other films is often restricted to lattice-matched single crystal substrates to produce desired epitaxial films. Ion assisted, electron beam deposition (IBAD) has been used to evaporate biaxially aligned ceria and zirconia films on amorphous substrates, thus producing a surface for the deposition of oriented Ba 2 YCu 3 O 7-δ films. The conditions at which preferential (200) film alignment is obtained has been optimized. The ion-to-atom ratio and ion beam energy are critical in determining beam effects on in-plane alignment Pole figures revealed that both (220) and (111) in-plane alignments parallel to the direction of the ion beam could be obtained depending on the ion-to-atom ratio. Certain orientations dominate at various temperature regimes on different substrates. The orientation regimes were similar on all substrates, but the temperature at which the trends were observed differed with substrate. Microstructures were correlated to orientations, with the desired (200) orientation being columnar. A mechanism to account for this biaxial alignment is proposed.