Growth, structure and annealing behaviour of epitaxial ZrO2 films on Pt(111)

Epitaxial growth of ultrathin ZrO2(111) films on Pt(111)

“…Because of the tunability of the photon energies, SRPES can provide very surface sensitive structure information of ZrO 2 on Pt(111). Our results prove that better quality films can be obtained with a slightly higher substrate temperature for deposition than those reported in the literature [8][9][10][11].…”

“…which is confirmed by SRPES (see below) and also supported by Meinel et al [9]. Maurice et al [8] observed a similar structure after annealing a fresh monolayer film, which was prepared at room temperature, at above 1100 K for several minutes with an oxygen partial pressure of 5×10 -7 Torr.…”

“…The thin ZrO 2 films were prepared by evaporating metallic Zr onto Pt(111) under an oxygen partial pressure of 1×10 -7 Torr at about 550 K, followed by post-annealing under the same conditions for 10 min and further annealing to approximately 1000 K without oxygen for 1 min. The annealing temperature was controlled to be no higher than 1000 K to avoid diffusion of Zr into the Pt substrate and the decay of the continuity of the film [8][9][10][11].…”

“…Maurice et al [8] reported that ordered ZrO 2 (111) films with cubic CaF 2 -like structures were formed on clean Pt(111) by depositing metallic Zr at room temperature in an oxygen atmosphere followed by annealing to 900 K. They used AES and ISS to characterize the ZrO 2 films and found that ZrO 2 growth on Pt(111) followed Frank-van der Merwe mechanism (i.e., layer-by-layer growth). However, following the same preparation procedure, STM analysis revealed that these films had hillock or discontinuous morphology [9]. After increasing the temperature of deposition up to 470 K and post-annealing at 950 K, ordered continuous films with large terraces were obtained when the ZrO 2 thickness was >4 monolayer (ML).…”

“…The epitaxial growth of thin ZrO 2 films has been reported on Au(111) [5], Cu(111) [6], Ag(100) [7] and Pt(111) [8][9][10][11]. A number of surface science techniques including *Corresponding author (email: jfzhu@ustc.edu.cn) low energy electron diffraction (LEED), scanning tunneling microscope (STM), ion scattering spectroscopy (ISS) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) have been used to monitor the growth of ZrO 2 films and characterize their structures.…”