title: Lateral solid-phase epitaxy of oxide thin films on glass substrate seeded with oxide nanosheets.
abstract: We developed a technique to fabricate oxide thin films with uniaxially controlled crystallographic orientation and lateral size of more than micrometers on amorphous substrates. This technique is lateral solid-phase epitaxy, where epitaxial crystallization of amorphous precursor is seeded with ultrathin oxide nanosheets sparsely (≈10% coverage) deposited on the substrate. Transparent conducting Nb-doped anatase TiO2 thin films were fabricated on glass substrates by this technique. Perfect (001) orientation and large grains with lateral sizes up to 10 μm were confirmed by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and electron beam backscattering diffraction measurements. As a consequence of these features, the obtained film exhibited excellent electrical transport properties comparable to those of epitaxial thin films on single-crystalline substrates. This technique is a versatile method for fabricating high-quality oxide thin films other than anatase TiO2 and would increase the possible applications of oxide-based thin film devices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo , 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
authors.forename: Kenji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Taira
authors.forename: Yasushi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hirose
authors.forename: Shoichiro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nakao
authors.forename: Naoomi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yamada
authors.forename: Toshihiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kogure
authors.forename: Tatsuo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shibata
authors.forename: Takayoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sasaki
authors.forename: Tetsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hasegawa