Selective growth of perovskite oxides on SrTiO3 (001) by control of surface reconstructions

We report surface reconstruction (RC)-dependent growths of SrTiO3 and SrVO3 on a SrTiO3 (001) surface with two different coexisting surface RCs, namely, (2 x 1) and c(6 x 2). Up to the coverage of several layers, epitaxial growth was forbidden on the c(6 x 2) RC under the growth conditions that permitted layer-by-layer epitaxial growth on the (2 x 1) RC. Scanning tunneling microscopy on the lattice structure of the c(6 x 2) RC revealed that this RC-selective growth mainly originated from the significant structural/stoichiometric dissimilarity between the c(6 x 2) RC and the cubic perovskite films. On the c(6 x 2) RC, therefore, formation of perovskite islands was forbidden from the nucleation stage. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3583443]