Thermal conductivity as a metric for the crystalline quality of SrTiO3 epitaxial layers

Abstract

Measurements of thermal conductivity Λ by time-domain thermoreflectance in the temperature range 100<T<300 K are used to characterize the crystalline quality of epitaxial layers of a prototypical oxide, SrTiO3. Twenty samples from five institutions using two growth techniques, molecular beam epitaxy and pulsed laser deposition (PLD), were analyzed. Optimized growth conditions produce layers with Λ comparable to bulk single crystals. Many PLD layers, particularly those that use ceramics as the target material, show surprisingly low Λ. For homoepitaxial layers, the decrease in Λ created by point defects correlates well with the expansion of the lattice parameter in the direction normal to the surface.