Deposition of Heteroepitaxial In 2 O 3 Thin Films by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

Highly oriented thin film In 2 O 3 was heteroepitaxially grown on an optically polished (001) plane of single crystalline yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) substrate using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of the X-ray rocking curve was 0.08° for 200-nm-thick In 2 O 3 layers indicating excellent uniformity of the crystallographic orientation compared with the heteroepitaxially-grown In 2 O 3 deposited by a conventional method such as electron-beam (e-beam) evaporation. The minimum yield (χ min ) of the MBE grown In 2 O 3 film obtained from Rutherford backscattering (RBS) spectra was also extremely small with a value of 3.1% implying high crystallinity with very low lattice defect density.