Conditions for Cuprous Chloride Ultrathin Film Formation on Silicon Substrate by Molecular Beam Epitaxy.

We investigated the conditions under which extremely thin films of CuCl are formed by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) on Si substrates, which are expected to grow epitaxially due to the small lattice mismatch of 0.44% with CuCl. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) observations of samples fabricated under various growth conditions revealed that the lower the substrate temperature, the thinner films could be formed. Experimental results also showed that suppression of the sublimation effect is effective for thinner film formation in CuCl, which has a low melting point, and a thin film of around 10 atomic layers is successfully fabricated by growth with the lowest substrate temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]