Iridium on Biaxially Textured Oxide Templates: A Concept to Grow Single Crystals on Arbitrary Substrates

Ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) allows a biaxial texturing of oxide layers on polycrystalline or amorphous substrates. Even the best layers still contain an in-plane angular spread of about 4 degrees. We report here a method to grow Ir films oil top of with a factor of 5 lower misorientation. It is shown that the huge texture improvement involves a massive these oxide layers realignment of the iridium islands and in orientation averaging process. Heteroepitaxial diamond was successfully deposited oil the Ir/IBAD-MgO multilayer stacks. The described texture improvement by irichum layers provides a general concept towards single crystal growth on arbitrary substrates. [DOI: 10.1143/JJAP.47.8925]