摘要
We demonstrate that thermal annealing in cation controlled environments is an effective means to obtain atomically flat and chemically single terminated surfaces of a layer structured substrate. The effectiveness of the cation controlled annealing method is proved with SrLaAlO 4 , which is a representative layer structured substrate of A 2 BO 4 type. Potassium ion scattering, in particular, shows that the method allows not only single termination but also selective termination of either A- or B-site on the substrate. We further demonstrate that the chemical nature of underlying SrLaAlO 4 substrates is of critical importance in the growth of SrRuO 3 thin films resulting in different morphologies and transport properties. © 2013 American Institute of Physics.