Growth and structure of Cu doped TiO2 on LAO(001)

Magnetic semiconducting thin films with remanence at room temperature are of primary importance for spintronic applications. We plan to realize one of such films by MBE, doping with copper TiO2 anatase films grown in epitaxy on LaAlO3(001). We will use in situ non-resonant and resonant x-ray diffraction (RXRD) at the Cu K edge to study the films structure.
With RXRD we want to determine if Cu is in substitutional sites and on which ones.

This is a continuation of proposal n° 21241559. Indeed, despite several attempts, this first experiment failed. We did not succeed to growth the desired films by Co and Ti co-deposition in O2 partial pressure. Cu was not oxidized and formed Cu nanostructures. A recent upgrade of IF-INS2 station allows to oxidize films by oxygen-plasma-assisted MBE. This revealed successful in growing e.g. CuO films (se report n°20240587). We believe that with this new plasma source the proposal can be realized.