van
der Waals (vdW) layered chalcogenides have strongly direction-dependent
(i.e., anisotropic) properties that make them interesting for photonic
and optoelectronic applications. Orthorhombic tin selenide (α-SnSe)
is a triaxial vdW material with strong optical anisotropy within layer
planes, which has motivated studies of optical phase and domain switching.
As with every vdW material, controlling the orientation of crystal
domains during growth is key to reliably making wafer-scale, high-quality
thin films, free from twin boundaries. Here, we demonstrate a fast
optical method to quantify domain orientation in SnSe thin films made
by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The in-plane optical anisotropy results
in white-light being reflected into distinct colors for certain optical
polarization angles and the color depends on domain orientation. We
use our method to confirm a high density of twin boundaries in SnSe
epitaxial films on MgO substrates, with square symmetry that results
in degeneracy between SnSe 90° domain orientations. We then demonstrate
that growing on a-plane sapphire, with rectangular lattice-matched
symmetry that breaks the SnSe domain degeneracy, results in single-crystalline
films with one preferred orientation. Our SnSe
bottom-up film synthesis by MBE enables future applications of this
vdW material that is particularly difficult to process by top-down
methods. Our optical metrology is fast and can apply to all triaxial
vdW materials.