Growth of Crystallographically Aligned PbSe Films of Controlled Thickness on Amorphous Substrates

Abstract Lead selenide (PbSe) has extensively been investigated due to its thermoelectric and photoconductive properties. More recently, predictions of emergent properties have focused synthetic efforts on preparing ultra‐smooth layers of crystallographically aligned PbSe layers with a thickness equal to an integer number of monolayers. While rough films are typically formed through Volmer‐Weber growth on heated substrates, the data presented herein indicates that a crystallographically aligned, ultrathin layer with a defined number of PbSe layers forms on mostly amorphous Mo−Se and V−Se coated Si substrates during nominally room temperature deposition. Since the films are uniform in thickness, the number of PbSe bilayers formed depends on the amount of Pb (or Se) deposited. If the amount of Pb deposited is close to that required for an integral number of unit cells and there is sufficient Se, Laue oscillations are present in the as‐deposited samples. The Laue oscillations reflect the quality and uniformity of the crystalline PbSe domains. This study demonstrates that the substrate does not need to be crystalline to form uniform, crystallographically aligned, integer monolayer thick PbSe films. These results suggest that tuning the strength of interactions between substrate and growing film is necessary to form smooth, crystallographically aligned layers. The substrate does not need to be crystalline for these interactions to be strong enough to enable growth of crystallographically aligned films.