%0 Journal Article
%A Caspers, Christian
%A Gloskovskii, A.
%A Gorgoi, M.
%A Besson, C.
%A Luysberg, M.
%A Rushchanskii, Konstantin
%A Ležaić, M.
%A Fadley, C. S.
%A Drube, W.
%A Müller, Martina
%T Interface Engineering to Create a Strong Spin Filter Contact to Silicon
%J Scientific reports
%V 6
%@ 2045-2322
%C London
%I Nature Publishing Group
%M FZJ-2016-07656
%P 22912
%D 2016
%X Integrating epitaxial and ferromagnetic Europium Oxide (EuO) directly on silicon is a perfect route to enrich silicon nanotechnology with spin filter functionality. To date, the inherent chemical reactivity between EuO and Si has prevented a heteroepitaxial integration without significant contaminations of the interface with Eu silicides and Si oxides. We present a solution to this long-standing problem by applying two complementary passivation techniques for the reactive EuO/Si interface: (i) an in situ hydrogen-Si (001) passivation and (ii) the application of oxygen-protective Eu monolayers–without using any additional buffer layers. By careful chemical depth profiling of the oxide-semiconductor interface via hard x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, we show how to systematically minimize both Eu silicide and Si oxide formation to the sub-monolayer regime–and how to ultimately interface-engineer chemically clean, heteroepitaxial and ferromagnetic EuO/Si (001) in order to create a strong spin filter contact to silicon.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%U <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000372067100001
%$ pmid:26975515
%R 10.1038/srep22912
%U https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/825183