Controlled Growth of Vertically Aligned Nanocomposites through a Au Seeding-Assisted Method

Abstract

Heteroepitaxial metal-oxide vertically aligned nanocomposites (VAN) have piqued significant interest due to their remarkable vertical interfacial coupling effects, strong structural and property anisotropy, and potential applications in magnetoelectrics, photocatalysts, and optical metamaterials. VANs present a unique pillar-in-matrix structure with uniform but rather random pillar distributions. Achieving a well-controlled pillar growth remains a major challenge in this field. Here, we use BaTiO3 (BTO)-Au as a model VAN system to demonstrate the effects of Au seedings on achieving such pillar-growth control with enhanced ordering and morphology tuning. The Au seedings are introduced using an anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template through pulsed laser deposition (PLD). TEM characterization reveals that the Au seedings result in straighter and more evenly distributed Au pillars in the BTO matrix compared to those without seeding, with the diameter of the Au seedings increasing with the number of pulses. Additionally, spectroscopic ellipsometry demonstrates distinct permittivity dispersion for all samples. This demonstration lays a foundation for future controlled and selective growth of VAN systems for on-chip integration.