Thickness and oxygen pressure dependent structural characteristics of BaTiO3 thin films grown by laser molecular beam epitaxy

A series of BaTiO3 thin films with various thicknesses from 10 to 400 nm were epitaxially grown under various oxygen pressures from 2 x 10(-4) to 12 Pa on SrTiO3 (001) substrates using laser molecular beam epitaxy. Being confirmed by reflection high energy electron diffraction, atomic force microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and high resolution transmission electron microscopy the epitaxial single crystal BaTiO3 thin films are highly c-axis or a-axis oriented with a root-mean-square surface roughness of 0.14 nm. The observed thickness and oxygen pressure dependent structural characteristics of the BaTiO3 thin films are discussed by taking into account both the misfits in thermal expansion and lattice constants between BaTiO3 films and SrTiO3 substrates, and the effect of the energy of the sputtered particles, which is consistent with the established strain relaxation mechanism. An abnormal expansion of lattice volume of a BaTiO3 unit cell is found and attributed to the effect of oxygen vacancies in the BaTiO3 films. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(00)03310-7].