Abstract
Our current understanding of the relationship between interfacialstructure and the resulting properties remains very rudimentary.This is a concern for many fields and applications, includingmetal/semiconductor contacts, insulator/semiconductor field effectjunctions, magnetic multilayers, ferroelectric thin films, andsemiconductor heterostructures. The situation is slightly improvedin the case of epitaxial growth where a deposited layer followsthe structure of the underlying substrate. However, even withthese systems the interfacial properties are difficult to predictaccurately, even when impurities and defects can be ignored. Thispaper highlights a number of recent examples of interfacestructure-property investigations that have attempted tounderstand how the interface formation determines the relevantfilm or interface property. PACS Nos.: 68.55.Jk, 68.55.Ln, 68.65.+g
Publisher
Canadian Science Publishing
Subject
General Physics and Astronomy