Single-crystalline rocksalt CdO layers grown on GaAs(001) substrates by metalorganic molecular-beam epitaxy

In this letter, we report the growth of single-crystalline rocksalt CdO layers on (001) GaAs substrates using ZnS buffer layers. The growth processes of CdO layers were studied by reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED), and the grown CdO layers were evaluated with atomic force microscopy (AFM), and x-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. After an initial growth delay, the formation of polycrystalline CdO was observed in RHEED measurements during the initial growth of very thin CdO layers. With the increase of the CdO layer thicknesses, streaky RHEED patterns were observed, which indicate the formation of single-crystalline cubic-phase CdO layers. Surface morphology of the CdO layers observed by AFM was atomically flat with root-mean-square roughness of similar to1 nm. The crystalline structures were elucidated from XRD measurements by the determination of the lattice constant to be 4.686 +/-0.001 Angstrom, indicating the single-phase rocksalt CdO structure. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.