Deposition of heteroepitaxial In2O3 thin films by molecular beam epitaxy

Highly oriented thin film In2O3 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 degrees for 200-nm-thick In2O3 layers indicating excellent uniformity of the crystallographic orientation compared with the heteroepitaxially-grown In2O3 deposited by a conventional method such as electron-beam (e-beam) evaporation. The minimum yield (chi(min)) of the MBE grown In2O3 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.