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The nonequilibrium epitaxial growth process of MgxCa1-xO solid-solution films at 600°C is carefully investigated. No obvious phase separation is observed until annealing at 800°C despite a large miscibility gap. The solid-solution film is featured with disorder alloy as confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Spinodal decomposition caused by uprising diffusion happens after short-time annealing which explicitly indicates the structure stability of the metastable solid-solution films does result from diffusion quenching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superlattices (SLs) consisted of alternating Bi2Se3 and In2Se3 layers are grown on Si(111) by molecular-beam epitaxy. Bi2Se3, a three-dimensional topological insulator (TI), showed good chemical and structural compatibility with In2Se3, a normal band insulator with large energy bandgap. The individual layers in the SLs are very uniform, and the hetero-interfaces are sharp. Therefore, such SL structures are potential candidates for explorations of the quantum size effects of TIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilayers of Bi2Se3/ZnSe with the periodicity of a few nanometers were grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on Si(111). While epitaxial growth of Bi2Se3 on ZnSe proceeded by two-dimensional nucleation, ZnSe growth on Bi2Se3 showed the three-dimensional growth front. Therefore, the two complementary interfaces of Bi2Se3/ZnSe were asymmetric in morphological properties. Strain-relaxation rates were found to differ between epitaxial ZnSe and Bi2Se3, which could be attributed to the specific growth modes and the properties of Bi2Se3 and ZnSe surfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]