Effect of substrate miscut angle on critical thickness, structural and electronic properties of MBE-grown NbN films on c-plane sapphire
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866911425397522432 |
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| author | Ithepalli, Anand Vashishtha, Saumya Pieczulewski, Naomi Liu, Qiao Rajapurohita, Amit Rohan Barone, Matthew Schlom, Darrell Muller, David A. Xing, Huili Grace Jena, Debdeep |
| author_facet | Ithepalli, Anand Vashishtha, Saumya Pieczulewski, Naomi Liu, Qiao Rajapurohita, Amit Rohan Barone, Matthew Schlom, Darrell Muller, David A. Xing, Huili Grace Jena, Debdeep |
| contents | We report the structural and electronic properties of niobium nitride (NbN) thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy on c-plane sapphire with miscut angles of $0.5^\text{o}$, $2^\text{o}$, $4^\text{o}$, and $10^\text{o}$ towards m-axis. X-ray diffraction (XRD) scans reveal that the full width at half maximum of the rocking curves around the 1 1 1 reflection of these NbN films decreases with increasing miscut. Starting from 76 arcsecs on $0.5^\text{o}$ miscut, the FWHM reduces to almost 20 arcsecs on $10^\text{o}$ miscut sapphire indicating improved structural quality. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) images indicate that NbN on c-sapphire has around 10 nm critical thickness, irrespective of the substrate miscut, above which it turns columnar. The improved structural property is correlated with a marginal increment in superconducting transition temperature $T_\text{c}$ from 12.1 K for NbN on $0.5^\text{o}$ miscut sapphire to 12.5 K for NbN on $10^\text{o}$ miscut sapphire. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_13917 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Effect of substrate miscut angle on critical thickness, structural and electronic properties of MBE-grown NbN films on c-plane sapphire Ithepalli, Anand Vashishtha, Saumya Pieczulewski, Naomi Liu, Qiao Rajapurohita, Amit Rohan Barone, Matthew Schlom, Darrell Muller, David A. Xing, Huili Grace Jena, Debdeep Superconductivity Materials Science We report the structural and electronic properties of niobium nitride (NbN) thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy on c-plane sapphire with miscut angles of $0.5^\text{o}$, $2^\text{o}$, $4^\text{o}$, and $10^\text{o}$ towards m-axis. X-ray diffraction (XRD) scans reveal that the full width at half maximum of the rocking curves around the 1 1 1 reflection of these NbN films decreases with increasing miscut. Starting from 76 arcsecs on $0.5^\text{o}$ miscut, the FWHM reduces to almost 20 arcsecs on $10^\text{o}$ miscut sapphire indicating improved structural quality. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) images indicate that NbN on c-sapphire has around 10 nm critical thickness, irrespective of the substrate miscut, above which it turns columnar. The improved structural property is correlated with a marginal increment in superconducting transition temperature $T_\text{c}$ from 12.1 K for NbN on $0.5^\text{o}$ miscut sapphire to 12.5 K for NbN on $10^\text{o}$ miscut sapphire. |
| title | Effect of substrate miscut angle on critical thickness, structural and electronic properties of MBE-grown NbN films on c-plane sapphire |
| topic | Superconductivity Materials Science |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13917 |