Growth of alkali halides by molecular-beam epitaxy

Abstract

Alkali halide single crystals are shown to grow well from molecular beams over a wide temperature range ∼(0.1–0.5)${\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{m}}$, where ${\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{m}}$ is the melting temperature. Growth characteristics for homoepitaxy and heteroepitaxy, for alloys and superlattices, are discussed and found systematically different from those of metals and semiconductors. The reasons are related here to the type of lattice cohesion.