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Updated: Mar 7, 2026

Atomically Defined Templates for Epitaxial Growth of Complex Oxide Thin Films
Published on: December 4, 2014
A Second Amorphous Layer Underneath Surface Oxide
Bin Zhang1, Kunlin Peng2, Xuechao Sha1
11Beijing Key Laboratory of Microstructure and Property of Advanced Materials,Beijing University of Technology,Beijing 100024,China.
Abstract:
Formation of a nanometer-scale oxide surface layer is common when a material is exposed to oxygen-containing environment. Employing aberration-corrected analytical transmission electron microscopy and using single crystal SnSe as an example, we show that for an alloy, a second thin amorphous layer can appear underneath the outmost oxide layer. This inner amorphous layer is not oxide based, but instead originates from solid-state amorphization of the base alloy when its free energy rises to above that of the metastable amorphous state; which is a result of the composition shift due to the preferential depletion of the oxidizing species, in our case, the outgoing Sn reacting with the oxygen atmosphere.
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