Terminating atomic plane and growth mechanism study of perovskite oxide thin films by angle-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

We report a study of terminating atomic plane and growth mechanism for the perovskite oxide thin films. The ferroelectric BaTiO3 (001) and the colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) La0 9Sn0 1MnO3 thin films were grown epitaxially on SrTiO3(001) substrate and LaAlO3(001) substrate by pulsed laser deposition (PLD), respectively. The crystalline structure and the orientation of these oxide thin films were determined by X-ray diffraction. The topmost surface for the both of BaTiO3 and La-0 Sn-9(0) 1MnO3 thin films were analyzed by angle-resolved X - ray photoelectron spectroscopy (ARXPS), indicating that the BaTiO3 film is predominantly terminated with TiO2 atomic plane and the growth sequence of the atomic layers is TiO2 (substrate) // BaO / TiO2 / ...... / BaO / TiO2; the La0 9Sn0 1MnO3 film is predominantly terminated with MnO2 atomic plane and the growth sequence of the layers is AlO2 (substrate) // La(Sn)O / MnO2 / ...... / La(Sn)O MnO2. The evaluation for the LaNiO3 thin film grown on the SrTiO3 (001) substrate is also provided.