Critical thickness of high structural quality SrTiO3 films grown on orthorhombic (101) DyScO3

Strained epitaxial SrTiO{sub 3} films were grown on orthorhombic (101) DyScO{sub 3} substrates by reactive molecular-beam epitaxy. The epitaxy of this substrate/film combination is cube on cube with a pseudocubic out-of-plane (001) orientation. The strain state and structural perfection of films with thicknesses ranging from 50 to 1000 {angstrom} were examined using x-ray scattering. The critical thickness at which misfit dislocations was introduced was between 350 and 500 {angstrom}. These films have the narrowest rocking curves (full width at half maximum) ever reported for any heteroepitaxial oxide film (0.0018{sup o}). Only a modest amount of relaxation is seen in films exceeding the critical thicknesses even after postdeposition annealing at 700{sup o}C in 1 atm of oxygen. The dependence of strain relaxation on crystallographic direction is attributed to the anisotropy of the substrate. These SrTiO{sub 3} films show structural quality more typical of semiconductors such as GaAs and silicon than perovskite materials; their structural relaxation behavior also shows similarity to that of compound semiconductor films