Cooperative solid-vapor-phase epitaxy: An approach for fabrication of single-crystalline insulator/Si/insulator nanostructures

We study the growth of insulator/Si/insulator nanostructures on Si(111) using molecular beam epitaxy. Based on different investigations, we develop an approach for the fabrication of a nanostructure with a continuous ultrathin single-crystalline silicon buried in a single-crystalline insulator matrix with sharp interfaces. This approach is based on an epitaxial encapsulated solid-phase epitaxy, in which the solid-phase epitaxy of silicon is accompanied by a vapor-phase epitaxy of the second insulator layer. We call this approach as cooperative solid-vapor-phase epitaxy. As an example we demonstrate the growth of buried epitaxial silicon in epitaxial Gd2O3.