Three-dimensional quantitative chemical roughness of buried ZrO2/In2O3 interfaces via energy-filtered electron tomography

The protocol to calculate the chemical roughness from three-dimensional (3-D) data cube acquired by energy-filtered electron tomography has been developed and applied to analyze the 3-D Zr distribution at the arbitrarily shaped interfaces in the ZrO2/In2O3 multilayer films. The calculated root-mean-square roughness quantitatively revealed the chemical roughness at the buried ZrO2/In2O3 interfaces, which is the deviation of Zr distribution from the ideal flat interface. Knowledge of the chemistry and structure of oxide interfaces in 3-D provides information useful for understanding changes in the behavior of a model ZrO2/In2O3 heterostructure that has potential to exhibit mixed conduction behavior. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3690861]