Growth of metallic delafossite PdCoO2 by molecular beam epitaxy*

The ABO₂ delafossite oxides are a unique class of oxides with layered A-BO₂-A-BO₂ structure with inplane trigonal coordination. Here, we report successful growth of the metallic delafossite PdCoO2 by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [1]. The key challenge is controlling the oxidation of Pd in the MBE environment where phase segregation is driven by the reduction of PdCoO2 to cobalt oxide and metallic palladium. This is overcome by combining low-temperature atomic layer-by-layer MBE growth in the presence of reactive atomic oxygen with a postgrowth high-temperature anneal. Thickness dependence (5-265 nm) reveals that in the thin regime (<75 nm), the resistivity scales inversely with thickness, likely dominated by surface scattering; for thicker films, the resistivity approaches the values reported for the best bulk crystals at room temperature, but the low-temperature resistivity is limited by structural twins. This work shows that the combination of MBE growth and a postgrowth anneal provides a route to creating high-quality films in this interesting family of layered, triangular oxides.
[1] Phys. Rev. Materials 3, 093401 (2019); doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.093401