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Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Atomically Defined Templates for Epitaxial Growth of Complex Oxide Thin Films
Published on: December 4, 2014
Surface energies control the self-organization of oriented In2O3 nanostructures on cubic zirconia
Kelvin H L Zhang1, Aron Walsh, C Richard A Catlow
1Department of Chemistry, Chemistry Research Laboratory, University of Oxford, 12 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TA, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Highly aligned one-dimensional (1D) nanorods of the transparent conducting oxide In(2)O(3) have been grown on (110)-oriented Y-stabilized ZrO(2) substrates, whereas growth on (100) and (111) substrates leads respectively to blocklike 3D islands and continuous films. It is shown that the striking influence of substrate orientation on the growth morphology is controlled by differences in energies between the low index surfaces of In(2)O(3) and that spontaneous self-organization is driven by minimization of surface energies.
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