Low temperature epitaxial growth of anatase TaON using anatase TiO₂ seed layer

Anatase TaON is a promising semiconducting oxynitride with high Hall mobility. However, the high temperature (≥ 750 °C) required for its epitaxial growth on (LaAlO₃)_0.3-(SrAl_0.5Ta_0.5O₃)_0.7 by nitrogen-plasma-assisted pulsed laser deposition, examined in our previous work, disadvantages its practical application. In this study, we adopted two approaches to decrease the growth temperature: the use of a substrate with better lattice matching to anatase TaON and the introduction of an anatase TiO₂ seed layer. The growth temperature was successfully reduced to 650 °C by the latter approach. This indicated that the edge-shared MX6 octahedral network of the anatase structure effectively stabilizes anatase TaON.